


holiday mishaps

by andipxndy



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz, NCIS
Genre: Gen, HE JUST WANTED A BREAK, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Scorpia Rising, Tumblr Prompt, just a fun little thing, let alex rest 2k21
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29915961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andipxndy/pseuds/andipxndy
Summary: Alex Rider just wanted a relaxing holiday, somewhere where he could relax without any trouble cropping up. And with Jack and her family, he almost got that. ALMOST. And then he had to go and take a midnight walk. On the other hand... Ziva David swears she recognises the fair-haired witness to their murder case.
Relationships: Alex Rider & Jack Starbright, Jethro Gibbs & Alex Rider, Ziva David & Alex Rider
Comments: 10
Kudos: 64





	1. the beginning

**Author's Note:**

> this was a fun little prompt to get!! it was originally requested to @theneedlesslobsters (over on tumblr) but posted on @andipxndy-writes (also on tumblr), which i was pretty hyped about. this ended up being... a lot longer than i anticipated, though. aimed for 10k, ended up with 30k+. so i’ve split this into 5 parts as best as i could. apologies in advance for any typos throughout :P

When Alex had imagined himself going on holiday, this certainly hadn’t been his intended outcome.

Granted, it had been a while since he’d actually been on holiday, and most of the times he’d been on holiday in the past they’d been during the more peaceful times in his life, but just once he was asking for there not to be an eventful screw-up during the MI6-light period of his life so that he could actually relax. Just _once_.

Apparently, that was too much to ask for.

All he’d wanted to do was go to the mall with Jack, explore a little bit, maybe buy himself some souvenirs to take back home to his friends. The friends he had disappeared from for months before finally returning with his “dead” housekeeper to the home and the school system of his childhood. Of course, switching education systems had been a hell of a lot to deal with, but as an A-Level student now he didn’t find himself trying too hard to play catch-up. He’d even caught up to and surpassed Tom (not much of a feat but he’d take it), which had irritated his best friend to no end. He would have said it made his other friends laugh, but then he didn’t really _have_ any other friends.

But anyway, he’d wanted to go to the mall with his best friend, and that had backfired spectacularly, so now he was paying for it. Not in the literal sense, which is what he’d been hoping to do with a few souvenirs and some new clothes, but more in the metaphorical sense. And he hated that, because there was this whole thing about the customer always being right and not having to pay for something that they were disappointed with or didn’t like and that logic was sorely lacking right then.

How had it backfired? Well, at that specific point in time, he was heading through the mall, weaving through the crowds in an attempt to get away from his pursuer… whoever they were. He hadn’t entered the mall with the pursuers, otherwise he would’ve turned around and gone straight home. They’d somehow latched onto him and recognised him whilst he was there. Whether it was from the case he’d accidentally got involved in, or from one of the many missions he’d done in the past, he didn’t quite know. All he knew was that they were chasing after him and were probably going to kill him if they actually caught up to him. Or rather, that was what he was assuming.

He just considered himself lucky that Jack wasn’t with him but had gone off somewhere else. Even though that meant he was alone, it also meant that she was safer than he was, and hopefully the pursuers had stuck to chasing him instead of her shock of red hair. He would be absolutely fine with that.

Moments later, he was crouched down behind a bench, hoping to whatever deities existed that no one found him or outed him to his chasers. Perhaps if he waited there long enough, they would leave the mall, and he could find Jack and walk out just fine, and maybe go home or to the Navy Yard or wherever he’d be safe. Maybe even one of Jack’s siblings lived close enough for him to head there afterwards and give her parents a break, make the situation less stressful for them. Then they wouldn’t have to explain anything to them too. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

It was as these thoughts were running through his mind that exactly what he didn’t want happened.

His phone rang.

* * *

It would probably be best to explain exactly how Alex ended up in that situation in the first place.

In the teen’s defence, he hadn’t intended to get into trouble in the first place. It had been his idea to take the holiday to the States, yes, but that had been partially because he’d missed out on the A-Level Politics trip to New York and partially because he knew Jack was missing her family. Plus, it had only seemed fair for her to actually _see_ them before she decided to contact them asking if they could help her out finishing her Law degree — as much as Alex wanted to help her out with his own savings, she had refused to take any of it. Which he considered stupid but he wasn’t going to push her. Pushing _Jack_ was a stupid idea in and of itself.

Anyway, the trip had started off really well. Even though Tom hadn’t been able to come with them, Alex really enjoyed it at the start. They went to New York first, for Alex to catch up on the school trip that he’d missed and see all the sights everyone else in his class had spoken about, and they ended up spending most of the time sightseeing and trying various restaurants they’d seen on The Food Network (which Jack had thoroughly researched before they’d travelled). It was different without all of his classmates, but the teen found himself enjoying it more with Jack than the gaggle of twenty-or-so other teens who would’ve been on the trip. Alex thought he would have been stuffed silly for the rest of his life from all of the restaurants they visited, but somehow he always had space for more. Jack, obviously, started calling him a bottomless pit.

After about a week and a half in New York, they’d travelled down to Virginia. That happened to be where Jack’s family lived, and after everything she’d been through the past couple of years Alex was both excited and nervous about meeting them. After all, he was pretty much the reason why she’d stayed in the UK and dropped out of her Law course. Of course, he was also the reason why she was going back to study again.

Apparently Jack came from a military family, and so they lived on the base there. Quantico, Alex believed it was called. He’d been (rightfully) nervous when he’d found this out, but then he actually met them and he realised there had been nothing to actually worry about. He hit it off pretty quickly with Jack’s brothers and nephews and had been more than pleased when Jack told him they were spending a couple of weeks there together, as a huge family. He got in some good bonding time with them, and he even added them on socials so that they could message each other whenever he wasn’t around. Honestly, though, he enjoyed playing video games with them a lot more than he would enjoy messaging them on socials.

It had been whilst he was staying with the Starbright family when everything started to go wrong. Of course, it had been after a solid week of staying with them before anything actually happened, but it was more the fact that something had happened that pissed him off. He couldn’t even take one holiday to visit his housekeeper’s family without something going wrong.

Damnit, MI6.

It had happened on a late night walk. He’d wanted something to snack on in his room (whilst checking messages and playing games on his phone instead of, you know, sleeping), and of course Jack’s parents hadn’t had what he was craving in the house. American snacks just didn’t tickle his fancy like food from home did, but they would have to do. But he wanted something stupidly salty and really unhealthy, not granola bars. Hence, a late night walk. To the nearest convenience store. Which wasn’t too far out, hopefully.

Jack hadn’t minded letting him go out alone as long as he took his phone, and her parents seemed to trust that he’d be safe on the military base, so he’d been fine going out alone. In fact, he was glad to be going out alone. Sure, he enjoyed the company of Jack’s family, but as a self-proclaimed introvert sometimes he just wanted to be alone to recharge. Being surrounded by so many people usually prevented that.

The trip to the store had been pretty quiet. He’d taken his headphones with him, sticking them into his ears and playing some music on his phone as he walked. It was an album that Tom had recommended to him, and he had to admit — his best friend knew his tastes really well. And the store wasn’t even that far away, just as he’d hoped; it was only a fifteen minute walk from the house. The fresh air was nice too, and it gave him the chance to stretch his legs without asking whether he could go out for a morning run and risking someone deciding to join him (read: self-proclaimed introvert). When he entered the store, he headed straight for the snack section, looking through the different options available.

He didn’t really want to buy just cheetos, but he wasn’t really feeling like just chocolate either. It took him a little while to decide on what to buy, but in the end he grabbed a pack of cheetos, a couple of packs of chocolate, and a box of Cheerios to just snack on in his room (he knew what he’d said about healthy snacks before, but Cheerios had light layers of sugar on the outside so they counted as snack-worthy). Jack would probably judge him for it, but at this point he didn’t really care.

The cashier didn’t even really question him, popping a bubble of gum as he paid for his items and took everything in a bag large enough for all he’d bought. He had been half tempted to throw in a couple of sodas as well to make it a full midnight-snacking stock up, but he knew Jack would probably flip out if she saw it.

So yeah, the whole heading to the store and buying things at the store part was perfectly fine. He hadn’t encountered any issues, no one coming after him or anything.

No, the issue started when he was on his way home.

See, on his way to the convenience store, there had been a couple of alleyways that he’d passed on his way over. He hadn’t felt any need to look down them with the directions he’d been given and the fact that he was a bit of a danger magnet, and he’d had his headphones in anyway. If there was anything going on, he was blissfully unaware.

On the way back, though, he only had one in. Which meant that he was still alert as he headed back, listening out for anyone who could be sneaking up on him to mug him or something of the sort. After all, he was carrying a bag of shopping home. Anyone could see him as a target then.

That was the only reason why he’d heard the yell coming from one of the alleyways he’d passed on his way down, and he paused for a moment before backtracking to the entrance of the alleyway.

The alley itself was very dimly lit, so it took Alex a few moments for his eyes to adjust from the more clearly lit main street. When his eyes finally did adjust to the darkness, what he saw made his heart plummet. And then it made his instinctive, protective side kick in — the side that he had somehow honed with his time at MI6.

His need to protect.

And that was how he ended up kneeling beside a body, hands pressed to a wound to stop the man from bleeding out as his groceries sat forgotten to the side. And whoever had attacked the man laying on the ground had fled, though not before Alex had landed a solid few kicks and punches on the guy so that he hobbled away injured. But then, with the _actual_ attacker gone and _him_ left with the blood of a dying naval officer on his hands, he was obviously the main suspect on what had gone from a homicide investigated by the police to a homicide investigated by NCIS.

As if he needed to get involved in a murder case on a Naval base on his holiday visiting his housekeeper’s military family.

* * *

Cases weren’t so abnormal to encounter first thing in the morning at NCIS. In fact, they tended to spice up the day automatically just by providing something interesting to do other than paperwork and, in Ziva’s case, enduring the constant chatter of her ridiculously chipper coworkers. By chipper, she meant chatting non-stop about anything and everything that came to mind. And by coworkers, she meant Tony DiNozzo. Him specifically.

She honestly didn’t understand how Tony had so much to talk about, and there were many days that she wished he had lost his voice or was suddenly rendered unable to talk. Unfortunately, the moment she’d walked into the office, she’d realised that that day was _not_ going to be one of those days.

“Will he shut his mouth if I gag him?” she asked suddenly, looking towards McGee. The younger agent typed away at his keyboard, barely glancing up when he heard the question.

“No, he might actually _like_ that,” he commented casually, which earned him a playful grimace from Ziva and a _look_ from Tony.

“I’ll have you know, my bedroom tastes do _not_ involve gagging,” Tony pointed out, “yet.” He almost smirked when he saw McGee’s face flush and Ziva gag again, before a glint appeared in her eyes. A glint that made Tony almost regret what he’d just said.

 _Almost_.

“Perhaps your tastes involve other types of bondage?” she asked, almost sounding innocent.

Tony didn’t fall for it one bit.

Before he could respond to her, though, Gibbs marched into the bullpen and towards his desk, halting all conversation. After all, it wasn’t the sort of thing that they wanted to discuss in front of the man. It would have been… _ridiculously_ awkward.

“Grab your gear! Dead Naval officer in Quantico.”

By this point, all three agents had learnt not to question how someone had died on a Naval base, or who exactly had thought it smart to kill someone on a Naval base when there were so many officers living in the vicinity. In fact, they barely said anything as they all grabbed their bags and headed straight for the elevator.

As the doors shut, though, Gibbs casually commented,

“You should see a doctor about those bruises on your wrists, Tony.”

Which, of course, made Ziva and McGee turn to Tony with wide eyes as the more senior agent stumbled over his words, trying to explain himself.

* * *

When they arrived at the scene, they were almost immediately allocated to different jobs: bagging and tagging, interviews, and crime scene photos. The scene itself seemed to be in an alleyway just off a main street, dumpsters from the buildings either side of the alley placed at varying points along it up until the chainlink fence at the end.

The scene itself, with the dead Naval officer, was about halfway down the alley. Which, at first glance, was a little confusing. Anyone who was running from an attacker would head straight for the chain-link fence and probably get there or get significantly closer before getting caught. Which Ziva didn’t hesitate to point out as she moved to take photos of the scene whilst Tony bagged and tagged evidence.

Tony simply raised an eyebrow at her as he bagged yet another piece of evidence. “You speaking from experience, Ziva?”

Ziva just blinked at him, confused for a moment. “You ask me as if you have none.”

“Experience in being chased or climbing fences?”

“Experience in being caught by your attacker at the fence.” The scowl she got from him only made her smirk, and she turned back to taking photos of the scene before he could come back with any sort of smart comment. If she wasn’t looking in his direction, it made it easier to zone him out and therefore easier for her to do her job. “Am I wrong, though?”

They both knew that she wasn’t wrong.

Before they could really continue their conversation, though (which was held a good way from Gibbs and Ducky so that they didn’t get overheard and told off for slacking), they were interrupted by someone approaching. All Gibbs had to do was send them a look and they’d zoom back off to work for fear of being so seriously told off, so they knew it wasn’t him when the approacher came with a significant lack of yelling or judgement.

In fact, they were just over halfway through their assessment of the scene when McGee had headed straight over, notepad in hand as he straightened his hat awkwardly. Like he was about to say something that the others — more specifically, _Gibbs_ — wouldn’t quite like. He awkwardly met Ziva and Tony’s eyes before he started to speak.

“Uh, so our main suspect… well, the guy that was found at the scene when the officer was dying, he’s uh…”

“Quiet?” Ziva offered, at the same time Tony said, “Eclectic?”

McGee was clearly resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Tony’s comment, and had opted to focus on Ziva for the rest of the conversation. Just so that he didn’t start yelling at the Senior Field Agent. “Yeah, in a way. Like, closed off. He wasn’t really answering the questions, refused medical treatment, and he has a guardian or something who’s come to try and get him to go home with her.”

That was when a frown suddenly appeared on Ziva’s face. Tony was the one who spoke, though.

“A _guardian_? What, is the guy a kid?”

When the only response was silence, it made Ziva more than a little worried. She’d got a brief glance of the suspect who had been at the scene as they’d approached the scene, and she hadn’t thought he was any younger than twenty. With the need of a guardian, though, that meant he had to be younger than eighteen.

Basically a child. _Legally_ a child. Which meant that his guardian was most definitely allowed to be around during any sort of questioning and interrogation. Sometimes that was helpful, sometimes it was difficult. _Very_ difficult.

And it seemed like McGee couldn’t tell which one it would be.

“Have you told Gibbs?” Ziva asked, glancing over McGee’s shoulder to try and take a look at the person he’d been interviewing. She could barely catch a glimpse, but what looked to be a fair-haired young man was sat on the back of an ambulance, trying to scrub what looked like blood off his hands. She didn’t know what the guardian looked like, but a redheaded woman was standing not too far from him, the only thing between them being a police officer seemingly mediating the whole situation.

McGee glanced over to where Gibbs seemed to be just finishing up with the body, leaving Ducky and Palmer to deal with the body and escort it back for the proper autopsy. “Not yet,” he answered, “though I guess I’m gonna tell him now.”

“I guess you gotta,” Tony responded sarcastically. Ziva nudged him with her foot, sending him a look. As soon as Gibbs approached the group, McGee turned to explain the situation to him, leaving Tony and Ziva to continue going through all of the evidence at the crime scene. They could only hope that the guardian was more reasonable than most guardians tended to be — cooperative and willing to let their ward actually _talk_.

* * *

When they finally got the kid to the conference room — because he still seemed more like a witness than a suspect, and because there was a guardian present who probably wouldn’t take too kindly to having their ward being questioned like they were a murderer — they found out that he was definitely a teen, probably around sixteen or so. He was also British, and on holiday to the States with his guardian to sightsee and visit her family. The guardian, on the other hand, was a lot more vocal about the situation than the teen was, almost ready to fight as soon as they’d stepped into the conference room. It had taken the interrogator, who happened to be Ziva at that moment, several minutes to convince her that the teen (who she had by that point had found out was called Alex) wasn’t actually in trouble but was just being asked about his opinion on what had happened. And even then, Alex had to nudge her a couple of times to make sure she didn’t just scream the room down.

When she eventually did calm down, Ziva got a pretty comprehensive understanding of the situation that made her realise that Alex wouldn’t have been in such a situation if someone had just gone with him to the store. Yes, he was capable of walking to a store by himself, but he was also on holiday in a foreign country, in a place that he wasn’t particularly familiar with. But, he was a teenager. Teenagers liked to do things by themselves. She certainly remembered doing things like that as a teen — or, at least, _trying_ to do things like that before getting caught and told off.

She still didn’t quite understand how his guardian had so willingly let him roam the streets of a foreign country freely, but before she’d had the chance to ask such a question, the teen started looking very uncomfortable in what he was wearing. After all, he was still in what he’d worn the night before, and the front of his outfit was stained with blood that would definitely be very difficult to get out. Ziva decided it was alright for them both to go. If they needed any more information, they could call them back in for questioning.

In fact, Ziva made sure to point this out to them. Whilst Alex, the teen, had been seemingly okay with it, his guardian clearly had not. She had a feeling she knew exactly who would pick up if they called them back in for further questioning.

Ziva’s time focusing on her thoughts was cut short when Tony suddenly appeared beside her on her way back from the conference room. She didn’t doubt that he’d been listening in from the other side of the door for anything and everything that could be of interest to their case, as if she couldn’t do the job well enough herself.

“Well, that sounded like a _fun_ conversation,” he commented, and she couldn’t quite read whether he was teasing her or just being sarcastic. She decided the first one seemed a more plausible conclusion and went with that, deciding that the best reaction would be to scowl at Tony before rolling her eyes at him. A usual response to him when he said things like that, and it wasn’t as if he was put off by her reaction if the smirk he gave her was any indication.

“Was the conversation not what you expected?” she challenged as they continued down the hall and exited into the general office area.

He gave a little shrug as they spotted the bullpen across the room, heading over to it. “I guess an interrogation— sorry, a _conversation_ is what _you_ expect of it, not me.”

Ziva glanced over at him as they reached the bullpen, moving towards her desk. It was when she’d sat down that she took the time to really scrutinise his face. “It was not what _you_ expected,” she stated, knowing that was what he meant without even having to ask the question.

He simply raised an eyebrow at her as he sat on the edge of his desk. “Oh, so you’re coming to conclusions without even asking me my actual opinion now?”

Her nose scrunched up as she stood and leaned on her desk, pointing at his face, wiggling her pointer finger a little bit. “Your opinion is written all over your face.”

Tony barely hesitated before turning to McGee at his desk. “Is my opinion written _all over_ my face?”

McGee didn’t even look before answering, “You’re as readable as an open book.”

Before Tony could argue, Gibbs was rounding the corner into the bullpen, causing the two bickering agents to quickly move to stand in front of the plasma whilst McGee remained at his desk, tapping away.

“What have we got?”

As pictures appeared on the screen, Ziva zoned out a little. The image of the teen had appeared alongside the image of the dead Naval Officer, Petty Officer Lewis, and Tony and McGee were rattling off details that they’d managed to find about him — his lifestyle, when he’d last worked, who he was married to, where he lived, where he was from, all of that sort of thing. The kind of thing that would explain if and when he could have found someone who wanted to kill him, that sort of thing. Ziva had already caught up on all of this before going into her conversation with the teen to figure out whether he was actually involved in what had happened to the officer or just an innocent passerby. From what he had told her, it seemed like he was more the latter.

She considered herself lucky that she managed to zone back in just as she was needed for information, and she snatched the clicker from Tony before zooming in on the teen.

“Our first and only suspect so far,” she started, “Alex Rider. Sixteen, British, lives in London with his guardian Jack Starbright.” A few more clicks, and a redheaded woman’s license appeared on the screen beside some of Alex’s extra details. “Alex is a regular school student, clean record, nothing out of the ordinary that would tip him off. Trained in the martial arts, but it seems like more of a hobby than anything.” Another click, and the image of Jack’s license zoomed in. “Jack is an American citizen, born in Virginia and raised on base. Her family are Navy, she has numerous brothers… nothing out of the ordinary with her either. It seems more like they stumbled on the situation out of…” She trailed off before she could finish that situation. She knew exactly what would be said about her observation.

“We don’t believe in coincidences,” Tony commented, glancing towards Gibbs as if he was looking for affirmation.

McGee raised an eyebrow at Tony. “I don’t know, Tony. This looks like a case of wrong place, wrong time to me.” And Ziva agreed wholly with that statement, she really did, even though there was the whole rule about there not being such a thing as coincidences. But she didn’t even need to look at Gibbs to know that he did not agree with that statement at all. He was probably staring at the screen with that usual steely look as he tried to come to a conclusion, trying to work out the case mentally and wait for his team to catch up.

“Question the family,” Gibbs suddenly suggested, moving to his desk to grab something. “Find out more about the kid, and find out more about the Petty Officer Lewis. His past and current contacts. Get more suspects. I need more information, and I want to know _everything_.”

There was a brief moment of hesitation and everyone mentally assigned themselves a task, before they all parted ways to do what they needed — leaving Tony and Ziva both grabbing their bags as they headed to the elevator, doing exactly as Gibbs asked them to do.

After all, who else would question the family?


	2. the questioning

To say that Alex had had a strange day so far was likely an understatement. Well, it was more like a strange day _and_ night, but it was pretty much all melded into one for him.

First of all, the fact that he hadn’t had a wink of sleep was throwing him off big time. He was used to sleepless nights, sure, but that was mostly from insomnia or, you know, terrible nightmares that kept him up for hours on end. Not being forced to stay up to keep an eye on a guy bleeding to death beneath his hands and then waiting for the paramedics to arrive and then waiting for the federal officers to arrive so that he could be questioned. Jack arriving had been a godsend until she started asking what the hell was going on and why he was being questioned about a man dying… and why he had blood all over his hands. Those questions had, fortunately enough, been easy to answer. He hadn’t been involved in the original situation, only in attempting to save the man and then prolonging his eventual death. He had nothing to hide.

The answers had been harder to explain to her family when they’d finally returned home and he looked and felt dead on his feet. As far as they knew, Alex was a bright-eyed teen with a couple of scars probably from his martial arts or fighting at school. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. So him coming home with blood on his hands and t-shirt and a ripped bag of shopping from the corner store (which he’d definitely got looks from Jack for) was shocking to say the least.

Luckily enough, Jack took on the responsibility of fielding off all the questions whilst he hopped into the shower, but she wasn’t exactly able to save him from her nephews going in and pestering him when he’d landed on his bed. He supposed his snoring was enough to put them off then.

He was woken what felt like a good while later by someone poking his shoulder a few times, which he was almost tempted to brush off. Until he realised exactly who it could have been, considering Jack was more the type to push him off the bed completely and make sure he woke up on the floor feeling a lot groggier than he would feel otherwise. Opening one eye, he turned his head to see it was one of her nephews, his “cousin” Pete, poking him in the shoulder to wake him up. He stopped as soon as he saw Alex’s one open eye, waiting to see if Alex would do anything.

Alex didn’t _want_ to do anything.

“What?” he grumbled, almost tempted to close that eye again and go straight back to sleep until someone (probably Jack) came to get him for dinner or something. Heck, he’d just remembered that he hadn’t even had lunch, or breakfast. Was he over-hungry?

He was so drawn into his thoughts that he almost missed the question thrown at him.

“Where did you go last night?”

Sighing, Alex closed his one open eye again before pushing himself up into a sitting position. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to get much more sleep now, so he may as well start to wake himself up so that he could get something to eat. Last he remembered, Jack had had his snacks that he’d brought back. She’d probably taken them and hidden them somewhere so that he couldn’t get to them after everything that had happened the night before.

Thanks, Jack.

“I went out to get snacks,” Alex mumbled in response, hoping that that was enough of an answer and that he could go and get food. Now that he was waking up a bit more, he was starting to feel hungry.

Unfortunately (and Alex could have predicted this very easily), that wasn’t enough of an answer for him.

“Yeah, but it doesn’t take you all night to get snacks.”

He had a point there. It didn’t take anyone all night to get snacks. Unless you were Alex Rider and trouble seemed to follow you everywhere you went. At least this time, it was less him getting _into_ trouble and more him _finding_ trouble and trying to get someone else _out_ of it. Not that he had succeeded or anything.

“Yeah, I know that,” he answered. “But I got held up.” Which was putting it lightly. And it wasn’t as if he’d _had_ to stop or anything. He’d chosen to do it, to try and help someone, and it had ended up being more of an all night ordeal. Was that enough of an explanation for this guy? Giving Pete a brief glance, Alex recalled exactly how old he was: thirteen.

There was no way he was going to expose him to that sort of thing at _thirteen_.

“By what?”

“Some trouble near the store. I had to get around it.”

Alex pretty much knew that this was a lame explanation, and he knew that it wasn’t the sort of thing that he would have accepted at his age either, but he also had standards, and he had a sort of god-complex. At least, that was what Tom had told him when he said he felt the need to protect people from his world. It was just a shame he’d ended up dragging his best friend into it.

The soured expression on the teenaged boy’s face was enough to tell Alex that he didn’t quite accept the explanation, but his lack of a comment meant that he wasn't going to press. Good.

“Where’s Jack?” he asked curiously as he pushed himself off the bed and to his feet. The boy seemed to hesitate again, somehow knowing that this was a cop-out, before answering.

“She’s downstairs, helping with dinner.”

 _Dinner_. His stomach grumbled at the thought of food, before he realised what time it had to be for Jack to be helping out with dinner. In simple words: _late_.

“You know where there are any snacks to carry us through to dinner?” Alex asked, and he hoped the small smirk on his face was enough to melt whatever suspicious wall had been thrown up by the boy.

The mention of snacks seemed to be enough to get the wall to come down, and the boy grinned before beckoning Alex towards him with a finger, and then led him out of the room. It seemed almost as if they were trying to avoid getting in trouble as they snuck towards the stairs and down to the first floor, where Alex presumed everyone would be — and also the spare room that Jack was sleeping in with one of her nieces. As soon as they reached the door, a quick knock and a lack of an answer told them that there was no one in the room, and the pair of them snuck in, shutting the door behind them.

“I saw Jack bring your snacks in here this morning,” Pete whispered to Alex, and Alex’s eyes lit up. At least she hadn’t got rid of his late night hoard… and for helping him out, he was definitely sharing with the kid beside him.

“Do you have any idea where she could have put it?” he asked, though he didn’t know why. If anyone had any idea where Jack his stuff in this room, it would be him.

When the boy gave a small shrug and shook his head, he knew that was more than an answer. He should have asked himself.

Which was what he did next. He asked himself: Where would Jack hide his stash of midnight snacks if she didn’t want anyone to find them? This was assuming, of course, that she knew he was going to sneak in there eventually and steal them back. Then again, she knew him pretty well — she probably knew that he would have tried to steal them back eventually.

Glancing around the room, he realised there were probably only two places that she could’ve hidden the bag, and he was more than a little disappointed in her for it. The room was set up with two single beds, for Jack and her niece, and at the foot of each bed was an open suitcase of clothes even though there were a wardrobe and a dresser in the room for each of them to use for their clothes. To be fair, even Alex hadn’t hung up his clothes in his room, and he was sharing with only one other guy who visited so often that he basically lived in the house and had his own clothes kept there anyway. As Jack’s suitcase was open, and there were no huge lumps in it, there wasn’t a chance that the clothes were hiding the snacks that he’d bought. (Plus, the bag was ripped and had got some blood on it — there was no way Jack would put that with her clean clothes.) The windowsill was clear, of course, but that wouldn’t have really been a hiding place. It was open and too obvious, and Alex probably would have been able to climb in through the window to steal them back. (Not that he would do that in someone else’s house.

That left the wardrobe, since the drawers of the dresser were too narrow for the clothes to be kept in, and underneath the beds. The two places that she could have hidden the bag.

Heading over to the wardrobe, he pulled open one door to see what was in there. Contrary to what he’d previously thought, some of Jack’s clothes _had_ been hung up in there ready for her to wear. He had a feeling, though, that these clothes were ones that had been washed by her mother, along with some of the shoes that she had brought along with them. It wasn’t as if the older woman would let her daughter fold her clothes and put them right back into the suitcase to get all crumpled up. That meant, unfortunately, that he had to dig around and look behind the clothes and shoes to see whether the bag was actually in there, rather than just spotting it at first glance like he’d originally hoped. He turned back towards Pete, who was awkwardly standing just a little behind him.

“Take a look under the beds,” he suggested. “Maybe the bag’s under one of them. I’ll look in here.”

The boy scrunched up his nose at the thought of getting on his hands and knees and looking under the bed for a bag of snacks. “Under the beds? On the floor?”

“Do you want those snacks or not?”

It took less than a couple of moments for the boy to apparently decide that he really _did_ want those snacks, and he turned towards the beds and got on his hands and knees, apparently deciding to go for his sister’s bed first. Probably not Alex’s first thought, but he supposed it was a decent idea. Hide the stuff with her roommate instead of with her own stuff. Smart.

Before Alex could start a proper search, however, he heard some chatter from outside the door and he froze. He recognised at least one of the voices.

“ _Okay, let me just get a jacket and then I’ll go with you—_ ”

He turned towards the boy kneeling on the floor with wide eyes, and he stared at him right back.

“Hide!”

As the boy scrambled underneath the bed, Alex jumped into the wardrobe and shut the door as much as he could, hoping that Jack hadn’t decided to keep her jacket in there and had instead opted for keeping it in her suitcase. A few moments later the door opened, and Alex stared out through the little gap he’d left in the door to see what was going on.

Jack had walked into the room, just as he’d thought would happen and, luckily enough, she headed straight for her suitcase instead of over to the wardrobe. He let out a near-silent breath of relief as she dug around the suitcase a little before pulling out a jacket and putting it on, turning and heading back towards the door.

“Alright, I’m coming!”

A few footsteps and a bit of chatter later and the door shut behind her, and Alex let out a larger breath of relief and waited for the sound of footsteps outside the door to disappear before pushing the wardrobe door open, climbing out slowly. He was both surprised and a little disappointed that they hadn’t got caught — he’d thought Jack was better at finding hiding people than that.

“You can come out now,” he called out quietly, and the younger boy crawled out from under his sister’s bed with a grin, dragging a ripped bag with snacks in it out behind him.

“Found the snacks.”

Alex grinned in response. “I think you’ve just become my new favourite cousin.”

* * *

The moment Alex realised that all of the snacks were there, the boys quickly realised that they didn’t want to stay in the room to eat the snacks. After all, they didn’t know how long Jack would be, and they also didn’t know whether she would randomly come back because she needed something or if Pete’s sister would end up coming back into the room because she wanted something from her own luggage. They just needed to get out of there and back to Alex’s room so that they could chill with their snacks. It was a brilliant plan, really.

Their only problem was making it to the staircase.

Of course, Alex knew that once they managed to get to the staircase they’d be free, able to go up to the room he was staying in and just snack until dinner. Both of them were hungry enough that no one would really notice if they snacked before dinner, and even if they weren’t all too hungry by the time dinner rolled around Alex was pretty good at stuffing his face now. Visiting friends’ houses and being given a lot of food by their mothers on the pretense that he was a growing boy who needed to eat more than enough to grow meant that he _had_ to be good at it, because wasting other people’s food was rude.

Getting to the stairs was definitely the hard part, though. As soon as they emerged from Jack’s room, the pair of them heard chatter coming from one of the other ground floor rooms. Obviously, everyone was probably downstairs getting dinner ready and casually chatting about stuff like sports or food or whatever it was adults spoke about when they were together and not around kids, but the tone of the conversation sounded… formal. Hushed. Quiet. It sounded _important_ , and Alex was suddenly very curious. Whenever adults were having important adulting conversations, they were usually the kinds of things that were very good to eavesdrop on.

Curse his naturally spying nature. It had got him into far too much trouble as it was.

Pausing at the base of the stairs, he was very tempted to step back and listen in on the conversation. But he was also very aware that he was with someone right then, and that they were both hungry and needing snacks before dinner. Alex was very aware of the fact that he hadn’t eaten all day, and his stomach was protesting against any sort of spying at that moment in time.

The boy watched him curiously. “What are you doing?” he asked, his brows furrowed.

Alex took a couple of moments to decide. _Did he do it? Did he leave it? Do it, leave it… do it… leave it…_

He was going to do it.

“I just want to listen in on something real quick,” he answered quietly, passing the snacks over before heading towards the archway to the living room. “I’ll be right here by the door. It won’t take long.”

Pete stared at him skeptically, as if what Alex was saying made no sense. “You’re going to listen in on the adults’ conversation?”

Alex couldn’t believe he’d got it in one.

“They’ll catch you before you can hear anything important.”

That just sounded like he was speaking from experience. “It’s alright,” Alex answered, trying to resist a smirk. “I’m kind of used to doing this.” Part of him wanted to add on that it was basically his job to do things like that, but that would be going too far. Plus, it would bring up all sorts of questions that a teenaged boy really shouldn’t be asking him.

Then again, he was also a teenager. If another teen couldn’t ask him those sorts of questions, who could?

Ignoring how anxious and unsure the boy seemed to be behind him, Alex moved to stand just beside the entryway to the room, hoping to at least catch snippets of the conversation going on in the room. Even if he didn’t get much, trying to listen out for something would probably sate his curiosity more than trying to forget about the whole thing and heading straight up to get snacks — he would probably be far too irritated with himself for not taking the opportunity he was practically handed on a silver platter.

For a few moments, he didn’t really hear anything that was being said in the room. After all, they were speaking in pretty hushed voices, so it wasn’t as if he would be able to hear anything until he was purposefully trying to listen out for something. Eventually, though, he actually heard something interesting and worth eavesdropping on.

“I can’t believe those agents actually thought we had something to do with that poor man’s death. As if our family has anything to do with that sort of thing.”

“They were just asking out of courtesy, mom. It’s their job to cover all the bases, just to make sure they actually catch whoever did this.”

“But to think that we had something to do with this—”

“It’s a part of their job to get closure for the man’s family, mom. What if it had been one of us? Wouldn’t you have wanted someone to ask every possible person who could have been involved?”

“What was that boy doing out late on his own anyway? He should have at least had someone to go with him. You should have gone with him, for God’s sake!”

“Jack said he’d be fine on his own, and he was. He tried to save a man’s life, and even though he didn’t succeed that was a _good_ thing, mom. He showed real courage. He could have walked off and left him to die alone.”

“He _should_ have walked off instead of getting involved in something like that. The poor boy could be scarred from something like that.”

“Oh come on, honey, he did a good thing. He was raised right, and Jackie definitely played a part in that. Knowing that she raised someone with such a good heart, aren’t you proud of her?”

“I’d be prouder if we were talking about her own child, instead of someone else’s child she became a guardian for.”

“Oh come on, mom. That’s more than a bit harsh, don’t you think?”

Alex decided this would be a good point to start zoning out. He didn’t really like listening to people talk about him like this. Not just because it was a private thing, but people didn’t really have anything good to say about him behind his back and he was speaking from a lot of experience. He was an orphan with no remaining family that he knew of. His own godfather was dead (and he’d been involved in his death) and had been the reason his parents had died. He didn’t really like hearing about his own family life and how he didn’t quite _fit_ into the typical idea of a family life. He didn’t blame people for thinking the way they did about his life and the way he grew up, but it did hurt a little bit.

But then the conversation switched again, drawing Alex right back in.

“What did they ask you about?”

“Oh, they asked me about any sort of connection to the guy who was killed, you know. Standard questions. The sort of thing you want to ask to figure out if someone is a suspect.”

“And?”

“I’m not involved with the guy, mom. I knew of him, yeah, but we never really spoke with each other. I didn’t even _know_ him. Everyone spread rumours about him and I kind of… stayed away. And that’s exactly what I told them.”

“They didn’t ask you about what you knew about Alex?”

Alex’s ears perked up at this.

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know anything about him. And I told them that. Alex isn’t from our family, he’s an orphan that Jack has been caring for for years. What else was there to tell?”

“If anyone had anything else to say, it would’ve been Jack, right? She would’ve told them what they needed to hear.”

“I mean, she told me she just told them that he was a school kid who knows martial arts and has a heart for helping and protecting people. Said he might be in the military one day, or something like that.”

Alex had to resist the urge to snort at that. _One day, huh?_ He was, technically, already _in_ military intelligence. He worked for the British government. Or at least, he had since he was fourteen. He had more enemies than a teenager should, come face-to-face with more guns than a gang member, and had visited more countries than most people had even if he hadn’t seen as many sights or had as many holiday photos.

“So nothing really incriminating or anything? He’s just a regular kid?”

“A regular kid who she loves enough to take a break in her major for.”

Alex could tell from the tone that that was always a sore spot for the family, or at least Jack’s parents. After all, she hadn’t gone into the military like her family was known for. She wanted to go and do law, and she hadn’t even finished with that. Granted, Jack had agreed that as soon as he started his A-Levels she would go ahead and start on her degree again, but he had yet to see her sign up or try to find somewhere to do it. He was beginning to think that he would have to push her to make sure that she actually did it rather than just saying that she would. Otherwise her family would be less than pleased, and they would end up attending university together.

Not that he would mind attending university with Jack, but the idea of it was weird when she had, at one point, been the person taking care of him whilst _she_ had attended university.

“Oh come on, no need to talk about Alex like that. He needed someone, and Jack had the heart to _be_ that someone for him instead of throwing him into the foster system like someone else would have.”

“I just wish she’d thought a bit more about herself.”

And that was where Alex decided to zone out of the conversation again. He had heard enough — they’d been interviewed again, and the whole death had been the topic of the conversation. He had also been a topic of conversation. He already knew that there was some tension there when it came to Jack taking care of him, no matter how nice they were to his face — there always had been.

Not that the whole thing would have been a problem if her family had sent her money whilst she was studying in the U.K., but he wasn’t going to touch on that right then. That sort of thing just upset him.

So he turned back to the stairs, where the boy was waiting for him, and headed over. He guessed he had some sort of dark or upset look on his face, because the boy looked unsure for a few moments, so he smoothed over his expression and forced on a believable smile.

“You ready for an ultimate pre-dinner snack time?” he asked, and the boy watched him cautiously for a few moments before a grin cracked on his own face.

“Yeah, I’m more than ready for this.”

And with that, the two boys raced up the stairs, not quite caring that they could be heard from the lounge where everyone was sitting. They had what they needed. They weren’t going to get into trouble now.

* * *

“Something doesn’t sit right with me.”

Ziva was staring at the screen in front of her, staring at the image of the dead Petty Officer on the screen. There were various pieces to the puzzle, but something just didn’t click. The pieces weren’t fitting together quite right.

There was one piece missing, and she couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Granted, none of the others could quite figure out what it was, but something was telling her that it was on her to figure out what the missing piece was. And she was feeling the pressure whether she liked it or not.

Of course, the other two didn’t see that there was a piece missing — at least, not the piece that she was thinking about. Which is why when she made the comment, both males looked up at her in mild confusion.

“Something like… what?” McGee asked slowly.

Ziva gave a little huff, trying to figure out how to put it. It was bad enough that English was a second language for her — she couldn’t even think of how to phrase it in Hebrew before translating it into English. This was going to be more than a little difficult. “It is… uh…” She gave a huff. “Okay, I am… I have a dilemma.” When Tony’s eyebrows rose in response, she decided to rephrase it in a way that didn’t seem so suspicious or strange. “I have a case of… well, of déja vu.”

“Déja vu?” Tony leaned back in his seat, tilting his head a little as he watched Ziva. Ziva didn’t know exactly what he was trying to get or read from her, but she brushed it off. Tony could be weird sometimes — and a bit of a creep at others.

“Yes.”

“You mean you’ve seen him before?” McGee typed a few keys on his keyboard, and the face of the dead Petty Officer appeared on the screen.

Ziva narrowed her eyes at the screen, and the photo of the dead man, before shaking her head. She might have seen the man in passing once or twice (though even that was unlikely considering she didn’t really spend that much time in Quantico), but it wasn’t his face that gave her the strange feeling. “No. Not him. I mean, maybe I have seen him, but he is not the one I’m speaking about.”

“Then who…?” Tony started, only for McGee to bring up another photo on the screen.

The photo of the teen they’d met.

“This kid?” McGee asked, looking from the screen to Ziva.

She nodded, snapping her fingers and pointing at the screen. “Yes! Him. There is… there is something about him. Something familiar.”

When she only received frowns from the other two, she supposed she could understand why. After all, Alex was only a teenager, and a British one at that. There was very little chance that they would have crossed paths, unless she had perhaps been on a holiday to the UK at some point, or if Alex had been on a previous holiday to Israel. Which meant that either she was imagining a previous meeting, that hse had seen his face somewhere before, or that they had in fact crossed paths at some point.

Ziva didn’t think herself creative enough to _imagine_ a meeting… but she couldn't quite pinpoint where exactly she could have met or seen the teen before…

“He’s just a British school kid,” Tony pointed out, and Ziva realised that her thoughts must have been showing on her face as they ran through her mind. “Where would you have met him before?”

“I do not know.” But now Ziva was determined to find out. “I will have to ask around.”

“About a teenaged boy?” McGee didn’t exactly scoff, but Ziva could hear the scoffing tone in his voice. Honestly, even _she_ was wondering how far she would get with that through her contacts considering he was literally a child, but she felt the need to follow the lead. A _strong_ need.

At that precise moment, of course, Gibbs walked into the bullpen and headed straight to his desk. Ziva didn’t know what exactly he’d been doing before, but he had a cup of coffee and looked ready to settle down and get some sort of paperwork done or look through some emails… if he even did that anymore. (She was beginning to wonder whether he had even done that in the first place, or whether McGee just did it all for him.) She decided that now was her best chance. She could feel Tony and McGee’s stares, but ignored both of them as she headed over to Gibbs’ desk, leaning on it. “Uh, Gibbs?”

Gibbs barely glanced up when she spoke. “You need permission to do something?” he asked, though it sounded less like a question and more like a statement with his tone.

“I would like to go and question Alex again.”

This time Gibbs _did_ look up at her, glancing at her over his reading glasses. “Alex?”

“Yes.” When he didn’t press further, she took it as her cue to elaborate for him. “I believe… well, I am of the strong opinion that he knows something that he hasn’t yet told us.”

Gibbs stared at her for a few moments, before, “And you think that if you go to him, he’ll tell you.”

“Yes.” It was a long shot, she could tell that even Gibbs thought of it that way, but it was better than nothing. It would get her constant thinking about him off her mind, and would also get them that little bit further on the case if he actually knew something that could be useful to them. The only way they could lose out would be if his family got agitated and stopped them from talking to him again, which she supposed was likely.

The elder agent stared at her for a few more moments, seemingly trying to read something on her face, before he looked back at his computer screen. “Sure. Go ahead.” Whatever he’d seen on her face, he was satisfied with it.

Ziva barely spared Gibbs a smile before she headed to her desk, grabbing her coat, phone, badge and gun. She could feel Tony’s stare burning straight into her as she did so, and she was very tempted to tell him to just spit out what he was thinking instead of just staring at her — it was pretty frustrating.

But she didn’t want to waste time on a little fight with Tony. So she just grabbed her things, and headed straight out.

* * *

Alex, if he was being honest, really enjoyed spending time with people in Jack’s family. Especially those that were his own age. It had been a while since he’d hung out with people his own age who weren’t automatically suspicious of him or wary of him because they either did or didn’t know about his past (Tom, of course, was the only exception). He was allowed to just be a teen again, and he was quickly realising that this was the exact reason why Jack had brought him on holiday to meet her family — so that he could be a kid again, without the pressures of military intelligence or federal agencies breathing down his neck and waiting to send him off on his next mission. Sure, Joe Byrne was part of the CIA, but somehow there was some sort of unspoken agreement to never use him again, and he was absolutely fine with that. After what had happened in Cairo… he was _more_ than fine with that.

So now he was just chilling with a few of his “cousins”. They’d taken him out to an open space — it looked like a park, but Alex didn’t feel like he would really call it a park when it just felt more like a field — and they’d played a couple of games of small-team baseball before someone had pulled out a football ( _soccer_ ball) and they’d started a small game between them. They, funnily enough, hadn’t been all that surprised to find that Alex was actually decent at the game. If anything, they were just impressed, as if someone had told them of his skills before and he’d just exceeded them.

He was beginning to think that Jack had really hyped him up before they’d had the chance to meet him.

They’d only stopped for a short break when a woman approached them where they sat, hands in her coat pockets as she headed over. It was the youngest of the group who was the first to notice her, and when he did he didn’t hesitate to make the rest of their small group aware that there was someone approaching.

Alex, frankly, was just surprised that she’d managed to find him. He, of course, recognised her from when she’d questioned him the other day, and very much knew that she was a federal agent. He didn’t think he had anything particularly traceable on his person, but he supposed he did if this woman was able to track him down.

She only confirmed this when she finally pulled him aside to speak to him in private, away from the eavesdropping ears of the rest of the Starbright boys.

“How did you find me?”

“Well, I guessed that you would have a phone on your person.”

Alex’s eyes narrowed at her suspiciously. “Isn’t that illegal?” he asked slowly. He got the feeling that she knew it _was_ illegal, especially since he wasn’t exactly a criminal or anything like that, but that she also wasn’t willing to go down that route of conversation.

“I thought I might ask you if there’s anything more you remember from the attack that you haven’t already told us.”

The pair was sitting on a bench now, away from most public footpaths and areas where other people would have been able to spot them and try to listen in on their conversation. Nice in privacy terms for Alex, but if anything happened then he wasn’t quite sure how he could tell the others when they couldn’t really see or hear him. And if anything happened and Jack found out that he’d been out of sight, she’d be more than angry with him. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to continue with this conversation anyway.

“So…” Alex started, not quite sure of where this conversation was going to go, “what do you want to know?”

Special Agent David, Ziva, seemed to pause for a second. She attempted to collect her thoughts, before asking, “The night of the murder of Petty Officer Lewis, do you have any particular memories that you haven’t told us yet?”

Alex blinked at Ziva, feeling very confused. _Any particular memories that he hadn’t told them yet?_ He was pretty sure that he’d told them all he could remember of that night — he’d been heading home from the convenience store when he heard something going on, the Petty Officer was attacked, and he tried to stop the bleeding. What more was there to tell?

A small part at the back of his brain tried to point out that he hadn’t included what had happened between him hearing the yell, the obvious call for help, and the Petty Officer ending up bleeding out beneath his hands whilst he tried to staunch the blood. But he hadn’t felt the _need_ to tell them that part. That part was more _need-to-know_ information.

Though, by the look of it, this NCIS Agent considered herself a person who _needed to know_. Alex, of course, didn’t know her well enough to think that she, in particular, needed to know, but…

He looked down at the palms of his hands, trying to figure out how to put what he wanted to say, what he needed to tell her, without _actually_ telling her. That was when she asked him another question.

“Do you, perhaps, know the face of the attacker?”

 _That_ one made his heart leap into his throat, and for good reason. He was pretty sure he remembered the face of the attacker — and he was pretty sure it was someone he had faced before, in another place, at another time. When he’d first stepped into the alleyway, he’d sworn that the face had looked familiar, and had thought it was just his past coming back to haunt him. Except the person had recognised him too, as if he hadn’t expected Alex to be there. Like Alex wasn’t the target. That had been an interesting revelation, considering his history, but it didn’t stop him from fighting.

Did he tell this woman that he had actually fought off the attacker? Especially when he, well, couldn’t even remember the guy’s _name_? (He had been a quick one to deal with originally, such an inconvenience of a criminal that he’d only had a short jail sentence. He’d sorted it all out in a weekend, from what he remembered.)

“He was… he was tall,” he admitted. If he was going to help them out, he may as well give them something as accurate as possible so that they could actually catch the bastard. “I couldn’t see much in the dim lighting, but I'm guessing he was blonde? Or at least had fair hair. No idea about eye colour. Fairly well built. He had some sort of an accent when he spoke, but—”

“He spoke?”

The way Ziva asked that made Alex frown a little. Huh. Hadn’t that been a detail that Alex had mentioned before? And then he realised that the attacker would have had no reason to _actually_ speak to him, so he might have avoided that detail originally.

 _Oops_.

“Yeah, uh. He spoke. A few words, but enough to get a gist of the accent, I guess.” Trying to keep it vague that he was multilingual was going to be difficult. He was meant to be a Grammar School teen. Not a Private School prick. What sort of grammar school kid knew more than two or three languages, including their native language? He probably wouldn’t if he’d had an average upbringing and education.

When he realised she hadn’t spoken and was waiting for an elaboration on the kind of the accent the man had, he cleared his throat. “Uh, I think it was Western European?” Which made a change, considering he’d only met a handful of individuals with such an accent. “Someone from one of the Latin-language countries. Probably Spain or Italy, I’m not completely sure.”

He was completely sure. It had to be Italy — he was very sure that he hadn’t met anyone Spanish who could have made such an impression (and was still alive). He wasn’t going to outright say that and out himself, though.

The agent nodded, pulling a notebook out of her pocket and scribbling down everything that Alex had told her. Glancing over, he realised that she’d written a couple of lines of notes on there already, in Hebrew, but the rest was in English. Huh.

Why did the name _David_ and _Hebrew_ strike a chord with him? He wasn’t Jewish or Christian, but…

He took a look at her face again. Yes, she was definitely familiar now. And he had a pretty good idea of why.

_Damn MI6 Spy Life._

It would probably be something he had to Google to clarify, just to make sure he was thinking of the right person, but he was pretty certain that this was the one. And then it occurred to him that if he recognised her, if _he_ had an idea of who she was, what she could do, and who she was related to… then did she know who he was? Because, of course, it very much seemed like she didn’t recognise him. And if she did, she was doing a very good job of hiding it.

“So, Spanish or Italian, tall, blonde or fair hair,” she rattled off, reading through her note briefly. She looked back up at him. “Anything else?”

Could he try to slide in that the man was some sort of drug dealer without her clocking onto how exactly he knew? “He, uh, smelled weird. Kind of like weed.” Yeah, that worked. He was a teenager, not an idiot. He knew more than a handful of people who smoked weed, and he’d come face-to-face with a dealer more than once, so that would work as a way. Not that those would be in his files or public knowledge or anything.

Wait, had they even _accessed_ his files?

Ziva noted down his comment on how the attacker smelled. “Anything else?”

Was there anything else that he could safely give away without outing himself? “He seemed pretty good at hand-to-hand combat.”

That earned him a raised eyebrow from the agent.

“I play a lot of video games.” Not a lie, but not the complete truth either. He would rather cry himself to sleep than play loads of rounds of _Call Of Duty_ or whatever other war-themed video games were out there without a break. He did, however, enjoy a couple of games of FIFA or Skyrim every once in a while. _Those_ games were actually fun, no matter how much Tom griped at him for “not wanting to play anything fun”. (As if _FIFA_ wasn’t fun, the idiot.)

Honestly, he wasn’t sure whether the agent accepted his excuse. It sounded weak, even in his ears. But then she was moving on, not questioning him about it or trying to press further on that particular point.

The rest of her questioning was pretty basic, in Alex’s opinion. He could tell she was trying to probe a little about his past, about what his home life was like and why he’d decided to try and save a random stranger when he wasn’t trained to. Why he’d gone in head-first instead of calling for someone else to help. After all… he had been in a military neighbourhood. There were bound to be many trained people around who could have actually helped whilst he called the emergency services.

Alex had just shrugged in response. He wasn’t the type to let an urgent situation go unnoticed when he felt as if he could help, and he made sure to tell her that. When he noticed the look in her eyes at that comment, he knew he should have phrased it differently. Or maybe he was over-thinking things. It wasn’t as if people would automatically think that he assumed he could help everyone with his limited skills from that comment, right?

Maybe he just looked and sounded like an egotistical teenager.

Eventually, after a few more minutes of discussion, the agent got to her feet. Alex followed her cue, more than glad to be done with the interview… or rather, questioning. It had almost felt like what had happened when he’d been at NCIS with Jack, except Jack wasn’t there scrutinising the agent’s every word or any little thing that Alex insinuated. If anything, he had been a bit freer to talk with the agent in the park, but he still very much had to watch what he was saying.

Not that MI6 or the CIA would let anything go too far or get leaked to people who had no idea of the situation, no. That would be more a matter of international security. But anyway.

“Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me, Alex,” Ziva responded, closing her notebook and tucking it into her pocket. “It was very informative.”

Alex gave a nod, hesitating for a brief moment before asking, “Will you… well, if the case gets solved, will you tell me who did it?” At the little frown on her face, he hurried to cover his mess-up. “I’m just curious about it all. You know. Since I, well, I tried to help the guy and ended up unable to… you know?” Well, here he was hoping that she just took his answer at face value. He was pretty sure he sounded enough like a curious and hopeful teenage to pass it off.

He didn’t quite know what vibe he was trying to give off to Ziva, actually. It was turning into a real mix.

There were a few beats where no one said anything, and Alex felt as if he could hear his own heartbeat in his ears. And then she spoke. “Of course. I can make sure you’re told when we catch the attackers. You will probably have to come in to try and identify them anyway — we may have to bring you in to help with profiling.”

Alex gave a nod, though he really did not want to have to do that. Otherwise, Jack would know that they’d spoken to him without her there, and she wouldn’t be pleased.

Agent David gave one last nod, watching Alex for a couple more moments, before turning and heading away, leaving Alex to head back to his “cousins”. And when they asked about what he had been talking about for so long, he would give them a vague explanation… even though he definitely knew that someone would tell Jack about it.

As if he really needed Jack finding out about this right now.


	3. the mall trip

It turned out that one of the cousins had, in fact, gone and blabbed to Jack about what had happened in the park, and she had been far less than pleased that it had happened without her there as his guardian. Because, of course, Alex was a minor. They couldn’t be asking him those things without a guardian there to make sure they weren’t going too far in their questioning. Of course, Alex knew that he could very much handle whatever line of questioning they threw at him — he was far stronger than most people knew, and he had been through a lot more than most _adults_ had anyway. Jack technically didn’t need to worry about him, but she did anyway. _Because_ of everything he had been through, and _because_ of the effects it had had on him the past couple of years.

He had to admit, though, watching Jack make that phone call to NCIS and yell at their agents over the phone for questioning Alex without an adult present was more than a little amusing, and Alex had sat there snacking on the rest of the box of Cheerios whilst she’d yelled like it was an entertaining TV show. Which, in reality, it was when he wasn’t able to watch the same things he watched at home.

That hadn’t stopped them from calling again to ask whether he could come in to help more with profiling and come up with a facial profile for them to go off. Alex wasn’t sure how much he would have been able to help, considering everything had happened in very dim lighting and there was no guarantee that the facial features he thought he’d seen were accurate. He only recognised the man’s appearance as a whole, not just from his face. If it turned out to not be the guy he thought it was, then it wasn’t his problem anymore.

Now, though, he was as detached from the case as he could get. They didn’t really need his help anymore, considering he had given them as much as he could. At least, he had _claimed_ to give them as much information as he could. There were some bits that he couldn’t _quite_ tell them, for very good reasons. He could send the information to MI6 and ask them to forward it on to NCIS or deal with it themselves, but 1) they weren’t meant to know about the case anyway; and 2) he was on a break from them, and he didn’t exactly want to get himself back on their radar unless he was _desperately_ needed.

Anyway, as he was distanced from the case (at least until they told him when they’d caught the guy), Jack had decided that he may as well be treated for going through what he had. In her eyes, it was the least she could do, even though he was more than grateful for not only the trip but for introducing him to her family. They’d taken him in as one of their own, and as someone who came from a _very_ small family, it was very nice to have such a large family who cared. Not biological, of course, but he was definitely beginning to care for them, and he would fight to protect them if anything came up. Plus, he had been through worse, and wasn’t as if everything he’d gone through on the trip had been _terrible_ , particularly when it came to her family.

So she had taken him to the mall. It was crowded, of course, which made Alex more than a little uncomfortable, but considering all of the different shops Jack was taking him into he deemed the discomfort more than a little worth it. There were various clothes shops she took him into to update his wardrobe, which he didn’t quite think was necessary but she did. He wasn’t going to argue with her on it, but he thought it was worth voicing his opinion. She did, however, take him into a couple of video game stores to see if there was anything he wanted to get. Of course, he pointed out that any DVDs would likely be region-locked, and it would probably have been the same for the video games, but at least he had an idea of what he wanted to get so that he could buy them when they got back home.

Needless to say, Alex was actually enjoying the shopping trip with Jack. It was refreshing to do something with her that wasn’t about his “job” or his school work or about anything in his life that troubled them. They just got to have fun, and not think about things, for a day.

It didn’t exactly last long.

In Alex’s defence, he hadn’t anticipated it, even though he had a feeling that he probably should have anticipated it considering his luck. If anything, he thought it was downright ironic that after a man had died in his arms, the man’s killer should come after him as if he had been the original target. Which, of course, he wasn’t completely sure about because there were many people who had died because of him and many people who had simply got in the way when someone coming for him was on a rampage. But now he was stuck, and in a fair bit of danger because, of course, he was a target for a killer. A drug dealer, yes, but a killer on the side clearly.

The two of them had been wandering through the crowds when Alex felt the strange little tingle at the back of his neck — a tingle that told him he was being watched. He, of course, thought it was strange that he felt as if he was being watched in a mall full of people, but tried to brush it off anyway. Perhaps his usual strange “spy senses” were acting up and becoming paranoid, thinking that someone was coming after him when he was safe.

When the feeling didn’t go away, no matter how much he tried to brush it off, he knew that something was wrong.

The two of them headed into the next store Jack had on their list of places to head to — a store for shoes, because Alex needed a couple of new pairs of trainers. He had reached his rapid-growing phase again, and this time his feet had decided to take advantage of his growth spurts and had gone up at least a whole size. Which meant that the majority of his shoes no longer fit, no matter how new or old they were. He mentally noted that when they returned to England, he would have to donate the newer small pairs of shoes to charity shops and simply bin or recycle the older pairs. For now, though, he could look through all of the different pairs on sale and pick a couple to take home… as long as the pairs were in his (new) size.

He had just sat down to try on a pair of trainers that he’d liked the look of when he felt the tingling at the back of his neck again, and he straightened. There was… definitely something wrong. Turning, he realised the main large store window was directly behind him, which meant that anyone could look through the window and see him.

Which wouldn’t have been so worrying if he hadn’t felt so on edge. The crowds were passing the window as usual, various individuals glancing into the shop and the items on display at the window, and Alex was beginning to think that he was just imagining being watched.

And then he saw them.

A pair of eyes standing within the crowd, further from the window than most of the people passing by. Staring directly at him. He wanted to say he had been imagining the eyes, and when he turned back to try on the shoes and then turned back to find the eyes gone he certainly thought he had been imagining it all.

He hadn’t quite considered how wrong that conclusion was until, whilst they were paying for a couple of pairs of shoes at the till, he felt the tingling again and he looked over his shoulder to see the eyes staring at him.

And they were considerably closer than they had been before.

He decided it was best not to mention anything about it to Jack until they got out of the store and were amongst the crowds again, where he could lose the person if he needed to. Part of him hoped he could just lose the person and not have to mention it at all to Jack. Of course, his luck didn’t work that way.

“There’s someone following us.”

Jack almost stumbled over her own two feet. “What? Alex!” She scowled at him. “Don’t kid about that sort of thing!” And then she noticed the look on his face, and her heart dropped. “You’re not kidding.”

Alex didn’t even bother answering that. “We need to split up.”

“What?”

Alex could just tell she was going to argue with that logic. “If they’re after us both, splitting us up means they have to cover more ground, and it’s easier to lose people when you’re on your own.” And if they were just after him, which was more likely, it meant that Jack was safe. He refused to lose her to any sort of villain ever again.

She looked like she wanted to fight him, to argue against him, but they’d been through so much together and she knew that he knew what he was on about. He didn’t make decisions like that on a whim. He calculated the risks, even when the calculation was a split-second decision.

Alex knew he’d won when she sighed.

“We meet at the food court in an hour,” she decided. “You call me if you can’t make it, and you tell mall security. I don’t need you getting kicked out for trying to protect yourself.”

Alex thought there were people more _important_ than mall security that he could call, but he nodded anyway. He appreciated the sentiment behind what Jack was saying anyway. “Stay hidden and out of sight.”

“Got it.”

And with that, they split up. Alex could only hope that they both lost whoever was following them so that they could go on with the rest of their day in peace. Somehow, though, he had a feeling that wasn’t going to happen.

* * *

“What’ve you got for me?”

Ziva had just dumped her bag down when Gibbs walked into the bullpen with his usual coffee, moving as briskly as usual. They were in a hurry, of course. Not that it was anything different from usual, but they had him. They had their prime suspect, their likely killer.

Except they didn’t have him.

Ziva didn’t want to speak first, she really didn’t, but it turned out she was going to be the one to speak first (if the look that she was sharing with Tony was any indication). Screw her partner, he could be such an ass sometimes.

“We went to Paulo Rossi’s apartment,” she started, moving to head towards Gibbs’ desk so that she wasn’t just speaking to him over his computer as he sat. “He wasn’t there, and his _roommate_ said that she hadn’t seen him all day. She claimed that he was often out at that time of day.” Of course, the tone that she said it in was more than enough to tell Gibbs that Ziva hadn’t believed the woman one bit, but he didn’t question it, leaving Ziva to go on. “We asked about where he usually goes and she didn’t have any sort of idea, but one of his neighbours told us that he was often seen down in two main locations — an area of the park, and near the local university.”

Of course, that sent off warning bells in all of their minds, if a drug dealer was hanging around and doing their business at a university, but it was also nothing out of the ordinary. They'd seen things like that happen far too often in their line of work.

“You search for him in those locations?” Gibbs asked, and it was at this point that Tony decided to speak up.

“Went to both of those places, found no trace of him anywhere,” he admitted. “His usual ‘contacts’ claimed to have not seen him around that day either — not since the day of the murder.”

That had also set off warning bells in Ziva’s head. Like the man was trying to run, or something. Or he had something else in mind that _didn’t_ involve his usual drug dealing behaviours. Out of the two, she would rather it be the former — it was far easier to catch someone on the run than someone trying to do something else that could put more people in danger. And if he was a successful dealer, then he had a _lot_ of money to access, meaning that the potential danger he could put people in—

“We got his cell phone number from his roommate,” Ziva cut her thoughts short before they could spiral and let her get distracted. That was not what she needed right then. Not when they were so close to solving the case.

“McGee!” Gibbs barked, and straight away he knew what to do. Tony placed the piece of paper with the cell number on it on McGee’s desk.

“Pinging his number now, boss.”

_But if he wasn’t going on the run, what would he be doing instead?_ They had already looked up most of his history — most of his family were either dead or estranged from him, his girlfriend had gone into hiding to escape from him anyway, meaning that he was alone. There was no one he could or even _would_ run to at a time like this, apart from one of his own agents or someone he dealt with. That left him going after someone who had put him in the position to have to run in the first place, to clear away anyone who could have seen his face that night.

Not many people had even been _out_ at the time of the Petty Officer’s murder. Apart from…

“Tony,” Ziva suddenly said, turning to her partner. She could see on his face that he could already see the cogs turning in her mind, and he was ready to brainstorm with her. “When we were leaving his apartment, did you hear anything? See anything?”

Tony’s brow furrowed as he thought through what she was saying. She waited a few tense seconds, but eventually he said, “Nothing from outside the apartment. The streets seemed pretty clear. None of the other apartments really did anything loud—” And then he shot out of his chair, like the seat suddenly burned.

“The roommate made a call.”

That changed _everything_.

“She must have called Rossi to tell him that we were searching for him,” Ziva muttered. “He is onto us.”

“Which means that he’s trying to get rid of anyone who could have leaked that it was possibly him _to_ us,” McGee chipped in. He gestured to the plasma. “He’s currently at the mall boss. Probably on the move, but inside the building.”

Who could have been inside the building for him to go after? Who was the only person who could have spotted him and leaked his information to the federal agents? Who was, therefore, the only person in danger at that moment in time?

_Alex._

“It’s Alex,” Ziva admitted, and suddenly she was regretting going after the teen herself to get more information and not thinking to put more security on him for his own safety. “He is going after Alex. As far as we know, Alex is the only one alive who could have seen him. Alex must be in that mall.”

A split second later they were on the move.

“McGee, send us the address.”

“Got it boss!”

“Ping Alex’s phone and call him! Make sure he knows and that he gets to safety!” Gibbs was heading briskly out of the bullpen, not even needing to tell Tony and Ziva to follow after him. They were already hot on his heels, guns and badges in pockets and holsters and shouldering their bags, ready to do what needed to be done. Standing in the elevator, Ziva took a deep breath as she stood beside Tony, only hoping they weren’t too late.

“Hey,” Tony said softly, nudging her a little to get her attention, “we’ll get to him just fine. We don’t let people down.”

At least, they _tried_ not to, and they tried very hard. It had happened before. They had made mistakes like this before. And whilst there was still that niggling feeling in the back of Ziva’s mind that she _knew_ the teenager, she was already feeling like she’d let him down. Like she was the one who had put him in danger. If he died, if Rossi got away with what he wanted, she would never forgive herself.

“Besides,” Tony added, looking ahead with the smallest of smirks on his face, “school holidays. That building is gonna be packed. No way that he’s gonna find and catch Alex before we can warn him, right?”

“Don’t jinx it, Dinozzo,” Gibbs warned, and Ziva could only hope that the idiot beside her hadn’t gone and done exactly that.

* * *

And so we return to Alex’s predicament: stuck in the mall, hiding from someone, with his phone ringing in his pocket. He had a feeling the people sitting on the bench would look over and find him there whether he answered this phone or not, but if he didn’t answer there was a chance that he could be in more danger than before, and also a certainty that he would be forever curious about who _had_ decided to call him.

Then again, he was meant to just be having a chill day with Jack at the mall. Not many people had his number, admittedly, but there was no reason _to_ call him if you knew him. Not unless it was something important.

He let two rings go, waiting to see if it was some sort of spam caller who would let the call go if he didn’t pick up quickly, before actually answering the call. Huh. A private number. “Who is this?” he hissed into the phone as soon as he picked up, forgetting for a few precious moments that he was meant to be a regular teen with manners and _not_ someone constantly assuming that a federal agency would call to employ his services. Again.

He knew he should have answered politely as soon as he heard the voice on the other side.

“ _Uh... Alex? Alex Rider? This is Special Agent McGee, from NCIS._ ”

Alex’s aggressive demeanour suddenly melted away. “Oh, uh,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, “hi. Sorry. I didn’t know who was calling.”

“ _That’s, uh, fine._ ” From his tone, Alex got the distinct feeling that it was _not_ fine, but he wasn’t going to question it and let McGee carry on. “ _We have reason to believe someone may be after you_.”

Well, it was a bit late for anyone to be telling Alex that, considering he already _knew_ that someone was after him. But he let the agent continue on anyway. He was just doing his job, and at least they’d got into contact with him about it rather than just leaving him in the dark and possibly running for his life. Heck, he didn’t even know where _Jack_ was. “Uh… really?” Though… that probably wasn’t the best answer to give in a situation like this, he realised.

“ _Yes. Agents are on their way to your location now, but until they arrive we’ll need you to get to a discrete location so that whoever is after you can’t find you._ ”

Easy enough to do, considering he was hidden behind a bench in a busy shopping centre. It wasn’t as if anyone was going to find him there, unless he got a little too cramped (which was beginning to happen right at that moment) and he needed to get up and stretch his legs (which he felt like he would need to do soon) so that they didn’t go numb from staying in that exact spot (which would definitely happen if he didn’t get up in the next few minutes). “Uh, I’m currently sat on a bench…” Well, technically behind, but he wasn’t going to tell him that.

There seemed to be a fair bit of tapping. “ _Do you know what stores are in your vicinity?_ ”

Alex glanced around at the different stores around him, and blanched. As if he’d had the misfortune of running into the ladies’ lingerie district of the mall. “Uh… none that a teenage boy can comfortably walk into without getting very questionable looks from everyone inside.”

“ _…Right_.”

Alex was so glad he didn’t have to explain himself.

“ _Are there any stores a little further out that you think you can get to without getting caught?_ ”

Alex knew he could probably get around the whole mall without getting caught by whoever was chasing him, but he also didn’t want to risk his luck and end up getting caught because he got overly cocky. Not to mention the fact that if he spotted Jack, and they decided to start sneaking away together, she would be far too obvious in a crowd like this.

He had to come up with a plan.

“There… might be somewhere nearby that I could find?” A food cart would be the easiest, Alex supposed, but he was pretty sure there was a store around that _didn't_ only sell women’s clothing and lingerie. Somewhere that would be more _appropriate_ for him to get into. He’d just have to search.

Agent McGee hesitated for a moment, and Alex could hear his fingers stop clacking on his keyboard. As if he was hesitant about whatever the teen had in mind. Alex had to remind himself for a brief moment that the agent wasn’t doubting his skills, but rather he didn't _know_ about exactly what damage he could cause if he were to be let loose on anyone who was coming after him like this. Not that he knew exactly who was coming after him, or why, but he was pretty certain that their intentions weren’t exactly pure.

“ _Okay, find somewhere safe, and do not move from that spot. And keep your phone on._ ”

That last instruction made Alex suspicious. _Were they tracing his phone?_ “Are you tracing my phone to keep an eye on where I am?”

There was a pause on the other line, and Alex realised he had to think of a reason to explain that one. No normal teenager should be questioning a federal agent about tracking or tracing phones unless it was ironically. “I mean, I guess it’s a good idea,” he tacked on, pretty lamely in his opinion. “It means you know where I am without me having to call you or give away my position, I guess.”

Apparently, McGee wasn’t even going to question his tone. “ _Just keep your phone on, and head to a safe location. When the other agents arrive, I’ll alert them to your location to protect you._ ”

Alex wanted to say that he didn’t need protection, that he could handle himself, but Agent McGee had already cut the call, and he was still only a teenager in their eyes. He couldn’t do much in the way of protecting himself — at least, that was their opinion. Alex knew what he could and couldn’t do, and protecting himself and others was one of the things that he _could_ do. Nevertheless, he got up from his position behind the bench, tucking his phone into his pocket. The people on the bench, who happened to be a fairly elderly woman and a man young enough to probably be her grandson, were watching him with confusion clear on their features. Alex gave them an awkward smile and half a wave, before carefully moving out from behind the bench. Once he was out, he looked around. There were people milling about everywhere, most of them obscuring his view, but he knew he couldn’t just stand there and wait. He had to find a store or something to hide in — and he had to find it fast.

* * *

It didn’t take too long for Alex to find somewhere that would be considerably more appropriate for him to hide in — a men’s store. Of course, he wasn’t nearly old enough to actually be shopping in there, but people didn’t give him weird looks as he walked in, and he at least _looked_ old enough to be able to walk in there without getting questioned. On his way down there, he’d spent most of the time looking around, trying to see whether he could give any sort of indication as to where he was through landmarks if the agents were to call him to ask where he was. When he’d found the store, and therefore had its name tucked into the back of his mind, he’d given a sigh of relief.

At least it wouldn’t be too difficult to direct him there if they needed to find him.

Heading over to one of the clothes racks, Alex began to look through some of the clothes available there. There were mostly t-shirts on this rack, which meant that he would fit in pretty well since, well, he didn’t know anyone his age who would willingly walk into a men’s store and buy _button-down_ _shirts_. So he grabbed a few of the t-shirts, hanging them over his arm as if he was really going shopping, before heading over to another of the racks. After venturing around a couple more racks, he ended up with a variety of t-shirts, jeans, shorts and short-sleeved shirts to try on in the changing rooms.

Because that was where he was going to hide. The changing rooms.

He guessed it was a pretty obvious hiding place, but it was also the last place you actually got to if you were searching through a store for a person. And if anyone decided to look for him in there, he would have more than enough time to prepare himself for any sort of oncoming attack if they had to enter through the front doors and make their way to the back. It would probably even give him enough time to escape, if he could get his timings right.

Getting a pass through to the back, he headed to the last-but-one stall, drawing the curtain closed and hanging everything up before climbing onto the bench — he would have a better chance at a surprise attack if they didn’t see his feet.

And then, checking to make sure he was ready and pulling a t-shirt off a hanger to use as a makeshift weapon, he waited.


	4. alex in action

If Ziva was being completely honest, she was pretty glad that Gibbs hadn’t let her drive to the mall. She knew what kind of driver she was — everyone had made her very well _aware_ of what kind of driver she was — but in a rush like this (where she felt partially at fault for a young man being put in so much danger) she probably would have caused at least _one_ accident. Or maybe two. She wasn’t completely sure, but she knew that Tony would be very willing to tell her if she just asked him. As it was, Gibbs’ speedy driving had kicked in the moment he’d started up the sedan, and Tony was hanging on tightly to his seat the entire way there.

He did not appreciate the way she hissed, “Wuss,” at him over her shoulder, but she didn’t feel like he had any right to complain about her choice of words.

As soon as the car screeched to a halt outside the large building, all three agents leapt out of the car, the engine barely even starting to cool as they headed towards the entrance to the building. Of course, Gibbs had decided _not_ to take the time to actually head to the parking garage, but Ziva was pretty sure they could get themselves off the hook for it later. Or just charge the ticket to the agency.

Pulling out his phone, Gibbs quickly dialled McGee’s number before pressing it to his ear. “McGee, where are we headed?” Ziva didn’t hear the answer to the question, but as soon as Gibbs began jogging through the crowds and in through the double doors she sped up her pace, following him into the busy building of people.

A busy building of people who could easily get in the way if something went wrong.

And she could feel that something would definitely go wrong with this. Call it a… _gut_ feeling.

Soon enough, Gibbs was tucking his phone back into his pocket as they began weaving through the crowds, leaving Tony and Ziva to follow.

“Where are we headed, boss?” Tony asked before Ziva could say anything. Ziva wasn’t exactly sure how or whether McGee could pinpoint exactly where in a _mall_ a person could be using their phone, but he could find a way of getting a location some other way… right?

“McGee says Alex started off in the lingerie district,” Gibbs started, and Ziva elbowed Tony harshly when he let out a snort. “He’s not hiding there, but should be somewhere close by. Keep an eye out.”

“And Rossi?” Ziva pressed, wondering how they would be able to get Alex to safety and the man arrested in the same day.

“Keep an eye out for him, he could be anywhere.” And he was searching for Alex just like they were. It’s likely he even had a head start on his location. They had to stay sharp. “DiNozzo, head to the upper floors, see if you can find any hint of Alex there.”

“Upper floors near lingerie central?” DiNozzo sensed Gibbs glare before he saw it. “Could’ve got to an elevator and travelled up to hide. On it boss.”

“Ziva—”

“I will head to the men’s section near the lingerie.” Which left Gibbs with the home stores. Much easier to search amongst men’s clothing than large stores full of furniture that anyone could hide in. “On it.”

* * *

Ziva had to admit, searching for a teenaged boy in a crowd of busy, moving people was not easy at all. Never mind the fact that she still had to make it down to the lingerie sector first before making her way back through the men’s stores (so that she could retrace his steps), forcing her way through a crowd without using her badge was tough enough. She couldn’t just give away the fact that she was a federal agent and tip off the drug dealer looking for Alex too. Otherwise he would disappear without a trace, and they wouldn’t have the murderer for their case. And he could also come after Alex for revenge.

She had to play it carefully.

Reaching the lingerie section, she turned on her heel and paused for a moment, forcing people to walk around her to get to their destinations. Glancing around, she thought she could spot a security camera and was tempted to ask McGee if he could find Alex on there for them. But that would require them going to security and getting a warrant and then permission… they didn’t have the time for that.

Gradually she made her way into the menswear sector, looking around at the different stores. Sports clothes, lounge clothes, general wear, suits…

 _Suits_.

She didn’t know why that one sounded right to her. After all, who would look for a teenager in a suit store?

Then she realised why it sounded so right to her. Who _would_ look for a teenager in a suit store?

If Alex was smart, he would have headed in there to hide. If not, she’d have to look elsewhere. Perfect.

Heading straight for the door, she wasn’t surprised when one of the store assistants tried to stop her. After all, she was clearly a woman going into a store for men’s clothing. The polite smile she was given almost made her roll her eyes.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out her badge and flashed it at him, tucking it away quickly. She was here on business. “I am looking for someone. A teenage boy. Fair hair, rather tall.”

The man almost appeared as if he didn’t want to help, like he didn’t want to get involved, but then he glanced towards the changing rooms. Ziva began to move even before he spoke, “Last I saw, a kid of your description headed in there. I haven’t seen him come out, and he’s been in there a while, but I may have missed him leave.”

Ziva just about remembered to throw him a quick thanks as she headed for the changing rooms, ignoring the various looks she received from men as she passed them. Before someone stopped her at the entrance to the changing rooms, she brought out and flashed her badge again, clearing her path pretty quickly.

Soon enough she was basically backstage, heading straight through the fitting rooms to find a cubicle that seemed suspicious enough to hide a teenager, and a pretty smart one at that. Most of the cubicles were open, and any that were closed had a voice flitting out from behind the curtain or visible feet casting a shadow from underneath.

Apart from one.

It was one of the penultimate changing cubicles, the last-but-one, and from what she could see the cubicles at the end were empty, curtains open. After all, who wanted to go that far back into the changing rooms when they could be in and out much faster closer to the entrance. She was pretty much certain that Alex had to be in this one.

Of course, in case it wasn’t, she unholstered her gun and set it to her side, holding it close in case she had to use it. Of course, the safety was on, but she knew she could be quick to take it off and shoot if necessary. Mentally, she counted in her head, slowly reaching for and taking the edge of the curtain.

_One…_

_Two…_

_Three!_

She pulled back the curtain and raised her gun, only to have to duck out of the way quickly when a clothes hanger came flying at her head. She started wide-eyed at her attacker, holding up her gun and very close to taking the safety off.

It was only because it was Alex that she didn’t actually do it.

“You could have taken my head off!” she snapped, glaring at him now. She, of course, did not appreciate the fact that he'd tried to attack her, even though she was glad that he had something to attack with in case it hadn’t been her or any other NCIS Agent.

Alex didn’t even look sheepish. “You could have shot me,” he responded, sounding almost calm.

“The safety is on.”

“I didn’t know that. All I know is that you’ve got a gun pointed at my chest.”

Ziva was almost tempted to point the gun at his face instead. Instead, though, she holstered her gun and pulled her jacket over it so that people didn’t see it and assume the worst. “Has anyone else come for you?”

“A couple of people have opened the cubicle expecting it to be empty. Other than that, though…” he shook his head, “nothing. No one.”

Well, that was good, Ziva supposed. Rossi hadn’t found him yet, meaning that they had the time to get Alex out of there and to safety and then track down the drug dealer and bring him in. This was all turning out brilliantly — or, at least, as brilliantly as it could go, which was to say, it wasn’t turning out terribly.

“Good,” she responded, nodding her head towards the door. “Let’s get you out of here. Then we can get you to safety and make sure you are protected before anything happens to you.”

“What about Jack?”

Ziva hadn’t expected that question. _Jack? His guardian?_ “Well, she will be in protective custody with you.”

“No, I mean…” he hesitated for a moment, biting his lip. “She came to the mall with me. When we realised someone was following me, we split up to lose them, and now…”

Ah, great. So now they had _another_ person to look for in this mall. That, of course, made their jobs a lot easier.

Not.

Ziva pulled out her cell, dialling Gibbs’ number and putting it to her ear. It only took two rings for him to pick up.

“ _You got him?_ ”

“I have Alex,” she confirmed, glancing at the teen. “We have one problem, though. The guardian, Jack. She is somewhere in the mall. And not with Alex.”

She could practically feel Gibbs’ frustration through the phone call. “ _I’ll get DiNozzo on it. Any idea where she could be?_ ”

Ziva looked to the teen for help.

Alex, of course, wasn’t a mind reader. So of course he couldn’t he hear what Gibbs was asking over the phone, even though he was usually good at that sort of thing. He had a feeling Ziva was holding the phone pretty tightly against her ear. “Yes?”

“We need details on when and where you last saw Jack, and where you think she could be.” Ziva handed the phone over to Alex. “Speak to Gibbs.”

Taking the phone from the female agent, Alex realised he didn’t need to explain what Jack looked like — all of the agents had met her before, as she’d gone with him to NCIS. So it wasn’t exactly a secret that she was a redhead with a spunky attitude. Well, spunky and protective, but most people missed the protective part if they weren’t looking hard enough. He paused for a moment to try and think on what to tell Agent Gibbs.

Gibbs seemed to sense that Alex wasn't exactly sure where to start.

“ _When did you last see her, and where?_ ”

When and where. A good place to start.

“We were in the Nike store when I first felt like we were being watched, and we were heading towards JD Sports to try and get me some more stuff when we decided to split up.” Well, it had been less of a “we” and more of a “he” considering the plan, but he didn’t need to tell Agent Gibbs that. It wasn’t as if Jack would spill that to them when they found her anyway. “We’d just got out of the store, maybe about four or so feet away, in the middle of the crowds. Jack headed in one direction, probably still towards JD, and I headed towards the home store section.” Which had ended up with him in lingerie, but he didn’t need to mention that.

“ _When?_ ”

“About half an hour to forty minutes ago,” Alex guessed, looking down at his watch. He couldn’t exactly recall the time he’d last seen Jack, but it felt like it had been that long anyway. “We agreed to meet at the food court an hour from splitting up, and to call if one of us was unable to turn up and tell mall security.” He said “we”, but it had been Jack’s idea, and she had definitely made that suggestion so that he remembered to contact her if anything happened. Because, of course, he had a habit of getting into trouble and forgetting to tell her when he was safe.

There was a brief pause on the other line, and Alex was pretty sure he could hear a bit of scuffling. “ _Pass the phone back to Agent David._ ”

Well. Alex would have appreciated a “thank you” or an acknowledgement that his information was useful, rather than that gruff response. In fact, something to acknowledge his usefulness would have been _polite_ , given the circumstances. Alex could very well have gone looking for Jack on his own, knowing that he could hold his own in any sort of battle. Well, most sorts of battle. When there weren’t civilians surrounding the area who could possibly involved in the whole situation. But he passed the phone back to Ziva anyway, who was nodding and muttering a few things into it before she ended the call, tucking the mobile device back into her pocket.

“Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo are now searching the upper floors for your guardian,” she informed Alex, and the teen nodded before realising that that meant _they_ weren’t searching the upper floors. That put him a little on edge.

“Where are we searching, then?” he asked her, and he could see the slight pinch on her face that told him he wasn’t going to like the answer that she was about to give.

“We will not be searching. We are going back to the car to make sure that you are safe, and if possible I will escort you back to the home of your guardian’s family.”

He didn’t like that answer one bit.

“Bullshit.” As if he was going home to face Jack’s family when she was somewhere in the mall hiding from someone who was most probably after him. He couldn’t deal with that sort of judgement. “I’m not going into hiding when Jack’s out there. I’m coming with you.”

“You cannot come with us.”

“You wanna bet?”

Ziva’s eyes narrowed. “I will force you into that car.”

Alex’s own eyes narrowed, a small smirk growing on his face. “Try me.”

* * *

It turned out that Alex was a lot better at convincing Ziva than he’d previously thought, considering he was now out searching for Jack with her instead of being tucked away in a car and being sent home. There was no way he would have been able to sit still at home with Jack out there anyway, and he was pretty sure he would have found a way to sneak out and head back to the mall to search for her himself. Which would have put them all in more trouble, if his track record was any indication.

Really, Ziva should consider herself lucky that he was there with her. Then she could keep an eye on him whilst they searched. He knew he had a habit of veering off the rails of safety and doing stupid things when left to his own devices.

“So, where are we headed first?” Alex asked, and Ziva raised an eyebrow at him. As if she still wasn’t sure how he’d managed to convince her to let him join her in searching for Jack. But it wasn’t as if she could do anything about it now; he was already there. He was probably about to get her in trouble with her boss for taking a minor on a possible rescue mission, but he wasn’t too sure he cared at that moment.

“I thought that you were the one with the idea on where to head next?” she asked.

He paused for a moment to think about it. Even if he was the one who had any sort of idea where they had to go next, he still had to think of where they _actually_ had to go. If Jack had started off by heading towards the sports area, then…

“Maybe we should head to JD Sports?” he suggested, his hand coming up to scratch the side of his face thoughtfully as they wedged through the busy crowds. At least, they seemed to be dying down a little compared to how busy everything had been earlier. “That’s where we were heading before. If we head there, then we can try to follow wherever she could’ve gone, maybe trace her steps and find her then?” And then, if the hour was up, they could head to the food court and see if they could spot her there. She would probably call if the hour was up and she couldn’t make it, like she’d told him to do, so then they could find out exactly where she was and find a way to get to her and get to safety.

Ziva nodded. “A logical course of action,” she agreed, and part of Alex was glad that she agreed with him on that. Not that he needed validation from a federal agent, considering he’d even worked with _the CIA_ before, but it was nice to know that his plans weren’t bat-shit crazy.

Unless she, too, was bat-shit crazy. Then they were both in trouble.

Regardless, the pair of them began to gradually make their way towards the sports shop that Alex had mentioned, weaving through the steadily thinning crowds as they went. It felt like they had been weaving and shoving for hours before Alex finally saw the shop Jack had intended for them to visit on their shopping trip. When he couldn’t see her standing outside it, he worried a little, before he realised that she would probably be hiding inside. Hiding outside would be a stupid plan if someone was chasing you, obviously.

A few minutes of weaving later, and they were inside the store asking about a redhead who may or may not have walked inside to try and buy some clothes, maybe head back into the fitting rooms. Or, rather, _Ziva_ was asking, whilst Alex was looking around and trying to find any hiding spots that Jack could have used. She may not have his spy fighting and investigation skills, but she was pretty damn good at hide-and-seek from what he could remember of his childhood.

Ziva walked back over to him when she finished questioning as many retail workers as she could find. Alex couldn’t quite read her expression, but he stood from where he had been searching underneath a couple of clothing racks and brushed himself down. Jack clearly wasn’t hiding underneath those.

“She did briefly head in here, but was turned away since she tried to head into the changing rooms without any clothing, and clearly wasn’t buying anything from the displays or the racks.”

That, obviously, frustrated Alex a bit (why hadn’t she just gone and picked some clothes off the racks?), but he supposed he understood. This wasn’t the sort of thing Jack did. She didn’t know how to look as inconspicuous as he did. Plus… she didn’t exactly look like the sporty type either. Though part of him still wanted to look in the back changing rooms, in case she told those store assistants to feed that lie to anyone who came looking for her. Which would have been a smart idea, and he would commend her for that if she actually _did_.

Ziva’s quick search of the changing rooms, though, revealed that Jack actually hadn’t done that and really had been escorted out of the store. Unfortunately.

“So she left?” he muttered, more to himself than to Ziva, and he turned towards the store exit. If Jack had left the store after being kicked out… where would she have headed to hide next?

If they had agreed to meet at the food court, then he would have gone to hide somewhere near there until the agreed time was up. Would she have done the same thing? Perhaps that was more his stomach talking, though. “Are there any stores near the food court?” he asked curiously. “Maybe she could be hiding in one of those, if that was where we agreed to meet?”

Ziva took a brief moment to think about that, and Alex gave a small sigh of relief when she gave a small nod. “There are some stores around there that I believe we could search. It shouldn’t take too long to figure out which stores to search in. If it does take longer than expected, we will at least be in the vicinity of the food court.”

“Exactly,” Alex agreed, before beginning to head for the store exit and completely forgetting that he wasn’t the one leading the search. “Come on.”

He didn’t notice the look that Ziva sent before she followed him out of the store and back into the crowds.

* * *

Alex didn’t realise it at first, but by the time they were reaching some of the stores close to the food court it had already passed the hour mark. Jack should have called him by then, and even if she could call him, then he should at least attempt calling her. Of course, he didn’t realise this until they’d reached the first store to search through, noticing the time on his phone when he randomly pulled it out to check it. His eyes widened.

“It’s already been an hour,” he pointed out with a frown, before checking through his call log. Nothing from Jack at all. Not even a voicemail message. “It’s been an hour, and she hasn’t called me.” He paused for a few moments, and Ziva watched him as he realised this. He stared down at his screen for a few moments, trying to decide on what to do, before he made his decision.

He’d call her first.

He didn't have to scroll far through his call log to find the last time Jack had called him, and he tapped on the number before putting the phone to his ear, waiting for the rings to end and for her to answer.

Except… she didn’t answer.

He felt Ziva pull him to the side, out of the crowd, but other than that he was focused on anxiously waiting for Jack’s voice to interrupt the rings. For her to tell him that she was okay, but would be late to the food court, or something along those lines. Something, _anything_ , to prove that she was still okay and hidden from whoever had been following them — to prove that _he_ was the one who had been followed when they’d split up, that whoever they were had left Jack alone and had ended up just losing him instead.

He could only cross his fingers and hope.

When Jack didn’t pick up after the sixth or so ring, he began to genuinely worry. Jack was never bad at picking up her phone. If anything, _he_ was the one who was terrible at answering calls — Jack was always good at answering, and was always berating him for not picking up his phone when she called him. He tried to force down the feeling that something was wrong. Maybe she was just at the food court and it was too loud for her to hear her phone ringing in her pocket. Maybe she was perfectly fine but was trying to order some food and would call him back in a minute. Maybe he was just overreacting.

Because he _had_ to be overreacting, right?

“She did not pick up?” Ziva’s words were phased as less of a question and more of a statement. Which put Alex on edge a little, but he tried not to let it show.

“No,” he admitted, trying very hard not to grit his teeth in frustration. He didn’t need her stating the obvious right then. “It’s fine. It’s probably too loud where she is to hear the call.”

The silence that followed his comment felt like it stretched on for aeons, and only served to make him feel more anxious about the situation. It took him a lot of willpower not to run off an start searching for Jack by himself.

“We should head to your meeting point, then,” Ziva concluded, a resolute tone to her voice as she pulled out her own phone — likely to contact Agent Gibbs. “It would be best to head to the meeting point now, just in case she is there already or is headed there and looking for you."

Alex was still staring down at his phone, but he nodded. It was probably the best course of action. Just head there, and make himself easy enough for Jack to spot. Maybe he would even be the one looking for her shock of bright red hair. That thought was enough to give him a bit of hope. He didn’t tuck his phone back into his pocket, instead holding it in his hand as the pair of them headed for the food court to wait for Jack and hopefully head home.

* * *

A few minutes of walking and a brief call to Gibbs later (where the senior agent’s displeasure at the whole situation had been _very_ clear), the pair of them were sat in the food court, waiting to see if they could spot Jack. Alex hadn’t seen any particularly bright shocks of red hair about that would definitely strike him as Jack’s, which only got him more worried the longer they waited. Ziva buying him a burger and fries to sate his hunger and calm him down certainly helped in him feeling less worried about the whole situation. Popping a couple of fries into his mouth, he looked up at her to see what she was occupied with.

Of course, her eyes were scanning over the food court for him.

He felt a little bad, leaving her to look for Jack on her own, but he hadn’t realised how hungry he was until he had smelled the various foods being sold in the area. He knew that had he been with Jack, he would have somehow convinced her to buy food from almost every stall so that he could try a bit of everything. And by trying a bit of everything, he meant _inhaling_ everything. If anything, it would have been something that they would have joked about on the way home, where Alex would have _still_ had enough space to fit in a large home-cooked dinner.

Because, of course, he was a bottomless-pit phase.

“I still do not see your guardian,” Ziva muttered, before looking back at the teen. Alex had almost missed what she said over inhaling the food in front of him. He put down his burger and wiped his mouth with the paper napkin before looking about, trying to see if he could spot Jack.

He couldn’t.

He really wanted to get up and properly search, but not only would it look suspicious to be searching for hiding places in a food court, it would look utterly ridiculous to do it whilst still eating. He’d have to finish his food first.

And then, his phone started ringing.

Alex frowned, looking down at the phone buzzing on the table, before recognising the called ID.

It was Jack.

Scrambling to clean his hands, he quickly cleaned them as much as he could on the napkin before answering the call, putting the phone to his ear. “Jack? Where are you?”

“ _A-Alex, I—_ ” Her voice cut off, putting Alex on edge, but it was the sound of another voice that put the teen on edge.

“ _Hello, Alex. It's so nice to finally hear your voice. I have heard so much about you._”

Alex’s breath caught in his throat when he heard a voice that definitely wasn’t Jack’s coming over the line. The suddenness of it had him torn between yelling and throwing the phone away from himself, and threatening whoever was on the other line so that he could hunt them down and possibly kill them for even thinking of touching Jack. Of course, that combination had him frozen, alerting Ziva to the fact that something was wrong.

Very, _very_ wrong.

“Who are you?” Alex finally demanded, and Ziva was watching him carefully. She had no idea what was going on, but she definitely felt like it was something dangerous. Her thoughts were only confirmed when Alex looked up at her and a look of concern on her face, and he pulled the phone away from his ear, putting it on speaker so that they could both hear whoever was on the other line.

“ _Me? Oh, I think you know who I am. I definitely know who you are. In fact, I would be surprised if anyone in our world didn't._” Ziva recognised that voice straight away, putting her on edge. Rossi had Alex’s guardian’s phone.

“I’m not _in_ your world,” Alex snipped, his eyes narrowing. Ziva could sense the hostility from the teen, but it felt like much more than an angsty teenager would have towards an offending adult. This sounded serious. And it only made her suspicions about Alex, and who exactly he was, increase. Who exactly was this teen who spoke with a drug dealer so callously?

“ _Oh, but if I think you are who this woman, your friend, says you are… then you very much are in my world._”

“What do you want?” Alex changing the subject added to Ziva’s curiosity about the whole thing.

There was a pause on the other line, as if Rossi was considering what he actually wanted, and Ziva quickly stood pulled out her cell, moving away from the table. If he had taken the guardian, Jack, and was going to make ransom demands… Gibbs needed to know. And he needed to know _now_. It didn’t take long for her to dial his number, and it took even less time for him to answer it and for her to quietly relay what was going on.

And all whilst the man was making his ransom demands to Alex.

“ _I want an escape vehicle. Maybe a helicopter. Or a plane. Something to get me out of the country discretely. You can figure it out._ ”

 _Clearly_ _you have the funds to get one for yourself_ , Ziva wanted to say. But considering how the conversation was going, she had to assume that the man thought that Alex was alone. So she couldn’t say anything loudly enough for him to hear, otherwise she would risk the lives of both Alex and his guardian. Why Rossi wanted out of the country so quickly, though, she had no idea. He had power on these streets, and even if he did get arrested he would probably gain power behind bars. There was… something a little suspicious about it. Like he had done something worse than just kill a Petty Officer, which was terrible enough in her eyes.

“You want to leave the country,” Alex voiced, unimpressed. “That’s really original. Escape punishment rather than face and learn from it.”

“ _Ah, the typical ‘Rider wisdom’. I was hoping to hear it. For some reason, it is far less impressive when you hear it for yourself._ ”

“People usually hear it when they’re about to _die_ or get seriously injured by me.”

That made Ziva double-take, and then she really saw the look in Alex’s eyes. Of determination and _anger_. A look she’d seen in the mirror multiple times before. The look of a person out for blood, because you’d touched something they considered more precious than diamonds. Warning bells started going off in her head. She knew Alex. Or, at least, she knew _of_ him. After this whole thing was sorted out, she was getting in touch with some old contacts to make sure she had his identity right.

The man on the other end of the line laughed. “ _I doubt that will happen._ ”

“Most of the other people who come up against me tend to doubt too.” Alex was looking down at his nails now, like this was a conversation he had had with many people before. A conversation that was starting to get old and boring. “None of them are alive. So, I’m warning you this one time: return Jack, and you won’t end up six-feet-under.” And the look in Alex’s eyes told Ziva that this wasn’t a simple threat that the teenager was making — this was a promise.

Alex Rider wasn’t a teenaged boy; Alex Rider was a dangerous man.

“ _Well, I’m not most other people._ ”

“You’re right. Most other people wouldn’t have taken Jack, so you’re doubly fucked.” Alex was glaring at the phone now, as if he could glare at the man through the device. “So, what are you going to do? I’d suggest you give Jack back to me so that you can get on with your life as if you’d never met me.”

Ziva was beginning to think that this would be a wise decision, a _very_ wise one, but clearly Rossi wasn’t all too wise. Which is why she wasn’t that surprised when the man answered with, “ _I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to ask for is an exchange. For your friend, a guaranteed escape route from the country, complete with a vehicle. And I want it in the next couple of hours, or you’re not going to see this friend of yours again._ ”

Ziva David didn’t appreciate threats. She had _never_ appreciated threats. If anything, she detested them, and tended to vow to kill or seriously harm anyone who threatened her or her family in any way. So for someone to threaten a teenager like Alex, who was not only a _minor_ but someone who was a lot more dangerous than he appeared… woe be unto them, she supposed. She focused back on her phone. “Gibbs?”

“ _McGee is tracing the call now. Stay with Alex — do not let him out of your sight. We're coming to you._ ”

Looking over at Alex, she knew that he would probably run at the next given opportunity to find his guardian. After all, that would be what she’d do in his position. Before she could answer Gibbs, he’d ended the call, meaning she was left alone with Alex waiting for Gibbs and Tony to arrive whilst Alex seethed in his seat over a call that had just ended for him. Honestly, Ziva felt if they didn’t get the man and put him into jail, Alex would end up doing something… and she wasn’t exactly sure what, but she knew that for legal purposes she wouldn’t want to know about it.

The conversation he’d just had didn’t stop Alex from finishing off the food in front of him, though. Soon enough he was polishing off his meal whilst scowling down at the table in front of him. As if that would be the solution to his problems.

Ziva got the distinct feeling that he was thinking up a plan to try and get his guardian back, and he would carry it out with or without NCIS getting involved. Ziva wasn’t sure whether she _wanted_ to get involved, but she was going to. For the sake of protecting this teenager from doing something he would regret for the rest of his life. God knew she had done that more than enough times in her own life.

“What are you thinking?” she pressed, narrowing her eyes at him, and he glanced up at her. And then he did something she almost thought was uncharacteristic — he bit his lip, looking a little nervous.

“I have a plan,” he admitted, and she knew from the guilty look on his face that it either wasn’t a smart one or wasn’t a _safe_ one. “I’m going to need your help to carry it out.”

“And why my help?” She frowned at him. What made _her_ so valuable that he was going to ask her for help before Gibbs and Tony even arrived?

“Well, you’re Ziva David, right?” When her eyes widened, he continued, “Then you have the skillset I need to pull this off, and you know exactly what I need to do and how.”

That… definitely put Ziva on edge. If he knew who she was, and wanted a particular _skillset_ of hers… then she knew exactly how she knew of him, and how he knew of her. And she also knew that if and when Gibbs found out about this whole plan that Alex had in mind, he was not going to be pleased _at all_.

* * *

It turned out that when Gibbs arrived and Alex told him what he was going to do and what he wanted to happen, the Senior Supervisory Agent wasn’t pleased at all. Ziva could see it in the expression on his face — she’d learnt how to read Gibbs fairly well over the time that they’d known each other. But he didn’t say anything against it. Ziva had a feeling it was because he knew that the plan was a good one, and he couldn’t come up with anything better to both get Jack back and solve their case, but she also knew that it was because Gibbs probably would have done the exact same thing. Except without involving a teenager.

The plan did, unfortunately, involve them actually obtaining a getaway vehicle for the man. Well, getaway _vehicles_ , and Vance wasn’t happy about NCIS supplying any of them. After all, Gibbs didn’t negotiate with criminals who kidnapped and attacked random civilians.

Ziva, by this point, knew than Alex wasn’t a random civilian, but someone intelligent who may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe he was just where the drug dealer had planned for him to be, and the Petty Officer’s death was just a ploy to trap him. If so, this whole thing was likely to turn against him in a pretty terrible way very quickly.

The fact that they managed to get everything Alex needed in about an hour impressed the teen, from what Ziva could tell, but he didn’t show it very much (if at all). Ziva herself wasn’t too surprised, because that was the way their team worked when it came to ransom calls, but a small part of her was a little worried that the plan Alex had in mind wouldn’t work. First of all because it mostly included just her and him, and secondly because she _didn’t know how he worked_. She wasn’t sure how she was supposed to work alongside someone she barely knew, someone whose files said he was just a schoolboy when he was clearly more skilled than that. She’d have to try, though, for the sake of that woman.

The next step was to go to the vehicles and check to make sure they were up to scratch, so that Rossi couldn’t say that they were trying or kill or sabotage him. Which disappointed Alex a little, but the teen was working with federal agents who were more in line with the law than most other agencies and had standards on how they treated their criminals. Even though many others would claim that they couldn’t see how Gibbs had _standards_. Once they were ‘up to scratch’, they headed back towards the mall, and Alex made a call.

A call that decided their next course of action.

The man had said to meet them up on the roof of the mall with the keys and locations of the vehicles he would use to escape in under two hours. They certainly had that sorted, but Alex wanted to make sure that the man was exactly where they had agreed to meet. Apparently, he had something against possibly losing Jack ‘again’. Ziva didn’t know what that meant, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to.

McGee, obviously, was tracing the call to make sure it was coming from the exact location that they expected, and Alex had the phone on speaker so that they could all hear the call coming through.

“ _Is there any reason you're trying to call?_ ”

“Well, I’m clearly not _trying_ if I’ve got through to you,” Alex pointed out casually, leaning back in his seat and crossing one leg over the other, ankle on his knee. Ziva almost did a double-take at the apparent change in personality, and Tony actually _did_ do a double-take. The teen appeared ten times as confident as he had just seconds before, and it was baffling.

Almost like he was putting on a mask.

Ziva was becoming more and more certain that she knew who Alex Rider was.

“ _What do you want?_ ”

“To be certain that you’re holding up your side of the bargain.” The teen looked to Tony, silently asking if he was getting any sort of confirmation from McGee that the man was exactly where he said he would be — still at the mall. Tony rushed to speak into his phone, pestering McGee (as usual) about his job and whether he’d got a location on the outgoing call on Alex’s phone just yet. “I’ve got what you wanted, but I’m not following through if you’re not holding up your side of it. Because if you don’t, I will hunt you down and make sure I fulfil my promise.”

Maybe Gibbs and DiNozzo didn’t know what promise Alex had made earlier, but Ziva knew. And she felt the urge to _stop_ the teen from making such a stupid mistake so early in his life. Holding grudges was good for no one. She knew from experience.

The other man only laughed, though. “ _Oh, Alex. You are quite amusing. Of course I’m holding up my end of the bargain. I’m exactly where we agreed to meet, don’t you worry. You just get here with what I’ve asked you for so politely._”

It hadn’t been polite, and Ziva knew this, but she could see Alex gritting his teeth. So she kicked him a little, silently telling him to cool it before he said something he regretted over the line. When she glared back at her, she turned to Tony. “Has McGee traced the call yet?” she hissed.

Tony held up a finger. “He’s working on it.”

“Well, tell him to work _faster_.” She wasn’t too worried about Rossi ending the call too early, since he seemed to have such an ego on him, but she was a little concerned that Alex would put his foot in it before the end of the call. Tony only glared at her before passing on the message, and McGee’s response made him roll his eyes. Ziva didn’t think she wanted to hear it if Tony was rolling his eyes.

And then suddenly, Tony was giving them a thumbs up. “He’s at the mall.”

Alex ended that call far faster than Ziva thought he could. “Great, see you in five.”

“ _Wait—_ ”

A very mature way of ending a call for sure, but Alex sat back with a sigh, closing his eyes. “That was exhausting.”

Gibbs spoke up for the first time since the drive started, “Imagine how it was for us listening.”

“It was a joy to listen to and you all know it.” Ziva couldn't help but roll her eyes at Alex’s cockiness, shaking her head. And, of course, Gibbs only rolled his eyes, but Tony was smirking.

Of _course_ he would be smirking.

* * *

Reaching the mall again, Ziva knew that Alex was more than tempted to just head off and find his guardian by himself. Honestly, if she were in his position, she would do the exact same thing, and she was pretty much known for bending the rules and doing things that Gibbs didn’t exactly approve of to protect those she loved. Her father, obviously, had been one of those people she toed the line with. But knowing what Alex wanted to do meant she was more determined to stop him from going off and doing something ridiculously stupid like that.

Which was why she was surprised when Gibbs was the one to pull Alex to the side to speak with him. Granted, she shouldn’t have been so surprised to realise that _Gibbs_ knew what was going on and wanted to put a stop to it to protect a child, but at the same time it let a pleasant warmth spread through her. Her father would never have done such a thing for a stranger’s child, linked to a case or not. Gibbs, of course, was the far superior parent. No question about it.

“What do you think they’re talking about?” Tony’s voice suddenly came from beside her ear. Had she been anyone else, she probably would have jumped out of her skin from the sudden voice. As it was, she just about managed to stop herself from turning her head sharply to look at him.

“Something that is none of our business,” she responded simply, before turning to face away from the conversation so it didn’t appear as if they were eavesdropping. Tony, however, didn’t seem to want to let it go.

“You really don’t want to know?” he pressed, raising an eyebrow at her.

“No, and I will snap your neck if you ask me that again.”

He smirked at her, leaning in close. “I don’t think you want to do that.”

She smirked right back. “I think you underestimate how much I actually want to do things like that,” she retorted, making his face blanch as she walked away grinning. As much as she did care for her partner, the fact that she was still able to freak him out with simple threats brought her a ridiculous level of joy.

Within ten or so minutes, Alex and Gibbs returned from where they had been chatting. Alex, rather than looking chastised as Ziva had thought he would, looked surprisingly calm. As if, well, he’d been trying to hide how he truly felt about whatever Gibbs had said to him. Though there was still a spark of appreciation in his eyes that Ziva could see — a spark that she hadn’t seen there before. It made her want to smile, and hope that this whole plan of his went through successfully. Oh, and also make sure the teen didn’t do anything completely stupid and reckless. She got the distinct feeling that that was the kind of thing he was prone to doing. And then they were heading towards the building’s stairwell and up to the roof of the mall, up to the meeting point.

It was time to get this plan underway.


	5. a job well done

As soon as they got back to the mall, Alex’s plan was running through his mind. Of course, he’d shared a plan with the agents, and another with Ziva, but he had his own plan that didn’t involve anyone else. A sort of backup of a backup, of sorts. He knew his own skillset, and the kind of havoc he could cause that wouldn’t exactly be legal. Which was why it was something he didn’t plan on letting any of the agents get involved in.

The eldest agent, Agent Gibbs, genuinely surprised him by pulling him to the side. He’d thought that the man was far too stoic and serious to actually give any sort of motivational talk, and if anyone would pull him off to the side to either speak sense into him or clarify plans it would be that Agent Ziva — she had more of an idea of what kind of thing he was planning on getting into. He wouldn’t even be surprised if it turned out that she’d worked out who exactly he was and decided to go ahead and stop him before multiple agencies got pulled into this mess — having the whole alphabet of agencies from multiple countries would not be good for anyone, and it would be even worse for whoever had decided to kidnap Jack. Because there was no way he was going to let MI6 let someone off for kidnapping Jack _again_. It had been traumatic enough the first time.

“What exactly are you planning?” Gibbs asked lowly — just about lowly enough for his agents to not be able to overhear the conversation. He knew how nosy Tony and Ziva could be. This conversation wasn’t for them.

Alex scowled at Gibbs, pursing his lips. “Whoever has Jack is getting away and is waiting for us on the roof of this building, and you want to pull me aside to ask about the plan we’ve already discussed?” The look Gibbs gave him told Alex that he didn’t believe whatever bullshit the teen had clearly just pulled out of his ass. Alex, however, didn’t say anything further until the look Gibbs was giving him really started to get to him, which he didn’t expect to happen at all. He glanced down at his feet for a few moments before back up at Gibbs.

“Okay… _maybe_ I’m planning something stupid…?” Alex offered weakly, getting the feeling that if he didn’t spill this man would find a way of getting information on what exactly Alex was going to do. He probably wouldn’t even be getting the information from Alex himself — Ziva was one of his agents, she would probably give up the information willingly if Gibbs asked her.

The look on Gibbs’ face changed from mild disbelief to unsurprised and unimpressed. As if that answer was something he expected, but still wasn’t something that he had wanted to hear. A stupid plan like what Alex was planning, even if Gibbs didn’t know what Alex was planning exactly, was bound to get him into trouble. In fact, Alex was relying on his typical luck of the devil to get him out of the situation alive (not necessarily uninjured).

“I promise, I’ll be fine,” Alex said, trying to convince himself more than Gibbs if he was being honest. He knew that he had to be fine, for Jack at least. She would probably kill him if he got injured in any way. But then, Gibbs was still looking at him in a way that showed mild concern and frustration at the fact that Alex had tried to pull off a stupid plan without warning anyone else first, and Alex felt the need to try and convince him more. He almost felt as if he was talking to and trying to convince Jack, not a federal agent he’d only spoken to a handful of times. “I will. I’m just… I need to do some of this my own way. If you guys knew about what I could do, then you’d risk getting in trouble. You guys are better off being unaware of what’s going on, because of plausible deniability.”

“I know why you’re doing it,” Gibbs answered simply. “I still think it’s stupid. And unsafe.”

Alex tried to cover up the little bit of sentiment he felt at the concern. It couldn’t be genuine. The man barely knew him. “I didn’t even try to say that it was a smart plan.”

“By stupid, I mean—”

“I’m not going to _not_ do it.” That was Alex’s one thing. He wasn’t just going to follow the plan of anyone else — he already had his own plan in mind. His whole reason for asking for Ziva’s help originally was because he had a feeling she would understand him needing to do certain things to get the job done. This Agent Gibbs guy probably wouldn’t. And even if he did, there was no point asking to see if he would _just in case_.

The man, Agent Gibbs… he didn’t say anything. Alex felt as if he could _see_ that the man knew what Alex was going to do, what Alex _wanted_ to do, but he didn’t say anything. He just stared at Alex for a few moments, as if he was thinking of what to say, before eventually he just gave a nod. Alex wasn’t sure whether that nod meant he was okay-ing whatever he had planned to do, or was just relenting to the fact that Alex was going to do something whether he liked it or not, but he was taking it. He was just about to turn and head back to the other agents to speak with them and maybe get the show on the road when he heard Gibbs speak again.

“Be careful.”

He was genuinely surprised when he heard those words uttered softly to him. No one had really said those to him before. No one other than Jack, maybe. Not many people he worked with actually _cared_ about whether he ended up injuring himself or not — just as long as he got the job done. And he could tell that Gibbs saw that he was surprised, because suddenly the man was cracking him a wry smile. As if he kind of knew that Alex had never really heard those words before, or at least that he wasn’t expecting those words to come from him.

“What, no one ever reminded you of the dangers of running headlong into a possible gunfight?” The words were sarcastic, and were definitely not anything that Alex expected from the man from what he’d seen of him before. If anything, they were almost friendly, and made Alex crack a smile.

“No, I usually anticipate from previous experiences,” the teen responded, before patting the bulletproof vest the agents had given him in the car on their way back to the mall. “Make sure they aim for the chest, and not the head. You know. The usual kind of common sense thing.”

Gibbs was still staring at him, a smirk on his face now, and Alex wished that he knew what the older man was thinking. What was making him smile at Alex so much? Was he _just_ smiling, or was he hiding laughter as well? And why at Alex?

“Just make sure you come out of this alive,” Gibbs pointed out. “That guardian of yours is a fiery one.”

“How can you tell?” Alex asked sarcastically. It was pretty obvious that Jack was fiery — anyone who hadn’t realised that after meeting her was delusional, in Alex’s opinion.

“The hair.” Now Gibbs was moving to head past Alex and over to his agents. “When you marry more than one, you get to realise the typical redhead traits.”

Alex’s eyes widened as Gibbs passed him with a pat on the shoulder, certainly not expecting that tidbit of information. He’d married more than one redhead? “How are you even alive?” Alex murmured. He couldn’t even imagine living with more than one Jack in the house. One fiery redheaded woman was more than enough for him.

Though, if he ended up marrying one he would definitely take it back. He’d have to, after all.

He thought he heard a small chuckle come from the man as he passed, but when he turned to see him all he saw was the man’s serious expression as he and his agents prepared to head up to the roof with him. The teen continued to watch the man as he gave his agents instructions, a curious expression on his face.

Agent Gibbs was a curious one, he really was. But Alex was glad that he hadn’t had the time to get to know him better, because that would have meant that he’d have spent a lot of time with NCIS… and he was happy enough with the minimal time he’d spent with them. If anything, he would have preferred _not_ to get involved with any federal agencies.

Ah well, he couldn’t have things his way all the time.

“Hey!”

Alex blinked a few times when he realised he was being called, and refocused to find that Gibbs was beckoning him over. He shifted the vest on his chest a little to make himself a little more comfortable, before heading over to go over the last bits of the plan with the other agents. Well, at least, the last bits of the plan they as a _team_ knew about.

* * *

Sat against the door to the stairwell, Alex took a deep breath. He knew he was meant to be meeting whoever it was that had Jack out there in about five minutes, but now he was feeling the nerves building up. He had been in a lot of hostage situations before, he had helped and solved a lot of them before. He wasn’t a stranger to them. But he couldn’t recall the last one he’d been in where Jack was the one he was trying to save (and not just one person amongst a class of other victims). His whole livelihood was riding on him being able to save Jack — because if he didn’t save her, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d have no guardian to take him back home and take care of him, and he definitely didn’t want that.

It shot his nerves through the roof.

“Hey.” Alex looked over when he heard Ziva hissing at him. He didn’t miss the gun she held, ready to use at a moment’s notice if anything went wrong but safety still on. (He, of course, didn’t even _try_ to ask for a gun because he was still a minor in their eyes.) “You know that you will save her, right?”

He didn’t want to be cocky and say that he knew, because part of him _did_ know that he could and would be able to save Jack if he really tried. But there was still that small part of him that doubted that he could do it, and do it smoothly. It would be far too easy for him to hurt—

“Yes,” he answered, cutting off his thoughts before they could spiral. He didn’t need that right now. “Yeah, I know. She’ll be fine. We can get her to safety.” He gave Ziva a half-smile as he took a deep breath, trying to ground himself. And then he pushed himself to his feet, ready to get things over and done with. And hopefully he could go home at the end of the day with Jack. Hopefully.

“I’m here,” Alex announced as he stepped out into the open space of the roof, stretching his arms out theatrically. Mask on, acting activated. “Where are you? Can’t have me out here on this roof alone, can we? That’s not our deal, and you know it.”

It took a few moments, but eventually there were some footsteps and some arguing from behind one of the many vents up on the roof, and three figures appeared in front of Alex. One of them, the most vocal, was a redhead and _obviously_ Jack. It had to be her. There was no one else she could be mistaken for. She was, of course, being restrained and pulled along by one man, whilst another walked ahead of the two with his hands in his pockets, a small grin on his face.

“Ah, so you _did_ decide to turn up.” The man at the front looked stupidly smug — to the point that Alex was fully prepared to roundhouse kick that smug look right off his face. He thought he was doing pretty well at restraining himself. “It’s lovely to properly _meet_ you, Mr Rider.”

“A shame I can’t say the same about you.” It wasn’t really a shame to Alex, but he said it out of courtesy.

Whether or not the man believed him, he simply gave Alex a wry smile at the comment. “Well, regardless of the circumstances, we’re here. Have you sorted out what we agreed on?”

Alex glanced over his shoulder at Ziva, who shifted to stand in plain sight behind him. As, you know, evidence that there were actually federal agents there and that federal officers had got involved in the whole thing. And then he turned back to Rossi. “It’s sorted. Specially for you.” Of course, the second sentence was said with a slight tone of sarcasm that he doubted the man would catch. “There are some requirements, though.”

There was a frown on Rossi’s face. “That was not part of the agreement we made—”

“Well I can’t exactly let a drug dealer get away scot-free, can I?”

There was a moment where Alex didn’t know how the man was going to react, where everything was still for a tense few seconds. And then suddenly things all moved at once. Alex wasn’t exactly sure how, but somehow Jack ended up in the middle, between the two groups, with a gun pointed at her head. Ziva was stood slightly behind Alex now, her gun raised and pointed at the drug dealer, but Alex had a gun pointed at him. Three guns, and two of them were against him. Granted, he knew that Agents Gibbs and DiNozzo were somewhere on that roof, hiding and ready to shoot if necessary, but it had turned into a situation where he really _wished_ he had a gun of his own. That would have solved this whole problem a lot faster.

“Now, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say, was it?” It was Rossi who had Jack now, holding onto her tightly despite her struggling, gun with the safety off pointed at her neck. A threat, and most likely an empty one, considering Alex knew that if the man wanted Jack dead he’d have the gun pointed at her face or temple and probably would have done it by then.

Alex wanted to shrug, give another sarcastic comment, but he knew that there was a gun pointed at him and that all it took was a little twitch of the man’s lackey’s finger and he would be bleeding. Probably in the leg, since no one with sanity would actually want to injure a _child_ , no matter what they could or couldn’t do. Plus, he was wearing a bulletproof vest. So instead he just stared blankly at them, waiting to see what would be interpreted from his stony expression.

The drug dealer chuckled at Alex’s lack of response, digging the barrel of his gun into Jack’s neck a little more before nodding his head towards the agent stood with him. “Make her put her gun down.”

Alex wasn’t all too fond of how the guy was talking through him to get to Ziva, but it turned out that he didn’t even need to turn to talk to her. Seconds later he could hear her placing her gun on the ground beside her.

“Good. Now,” Alex could see the pressure of the gun barrel on Jack’s neck loosen a little, though that didn’t lessen the fear in her eyes. “Do you have what I asked for? We did, after all, make an agreement.”

The teen continued to stare for a few moments, before he moved to reach into his pocket and pull out a set of car keys. “The vehicle is sat in a warehouse a couple of miles from here. The address is exactly where you asked for it to be. In the car is the address for the location of the helicopter for you to put into your SatNav, and then you'll be free.” Well… not exactly, but the guy didn’t need to know that.

As it was, he watched Alex with suspicion for a few moments before he said anything. “No tricks, Rider. I’ve heard of what you’re like.” He pressed the gun into Jack’s neck again. “This one is only free when I am. She’s coming with me to the car, and you can pick her up from there after an hour.”

“That wasn’t the agreement.”

“Yeah, well, plans change.”

Alex had to stop himself from lashing out at that, his jaw clenched in anger. That was not what they had agreed on at all. But, with Jack in his grip, the man had the upper hand. And he’d anticipated this happening. He could follow through with his plan and act now, and obviously be stupid about it and risk getting them all killed, or let Jack go. After all, he knew he was skilled enough to probably grab a gun and shoot someone, but he would probably end up getting shot before he could do anything. There was a look in Jack’s eyes that told him she wanted him to do what was best for _him_ , to keep himself safe and make sure he didn’t get himself hurt. Even if that meant losing her. But Alex had to get Jack out of there unharmed.

“I guess they do,” the teen responded, taking a step closer to the two men and Jack. Rossi took a step back, wanting to increase the distance between himself and Alex, but the teen wasn’t going to let that happen. He took another step towards the men, hands up, ignoring how there was still a gun pointed at him. He was pretty sure that by now, the aim had moved from his leg to his chest — he was putting himself in direct danger.

Actually, he had a vest on, so it wasn’t _too_ bad. He hoped. (He’d be fine until the gun aim clearly switched to aiming for his head.)

“You really think you’re the one in control, don’t you? At least, you think that enough to casually switch up the plans without telling me first. Trying to give yourself more of an upper hand just because you think _you’re_ the one in control of this whole situation.” He took another step towards them, watching them as they stumbled back. “I hope you realise you’re not.”

The man scoffed, still holding his gun to Jack’s neck, but there was a spark of fear in his eyes now. Alex held back the smirk that threatened to show. He knew.

“You know who I _really_ am, don’t you?” He could feel Ziva’s eyes burning into his back now, as if she was watching him closely. He knew that she had also pretty much worked out who he was now, even though she’d had no clue a day or so before when she’d come to the park to interview him (after tracking his phone, of course, which he _still_ had to get at those agents for). He’d tried hard to keep it as much a secret as he could — after all, if the CIA knew he was here, they’d start sticking their noses in and _no one_ wanted that.

The lack of an answer from the man in front of him, the man currently holding his best friend and guardian hostage, was enough to tell Alex that he definitely did know who he was dealing with. Maybe they hadn’t properly met before, but he’d heard of Alex and seen him before, just like Alex had seen him once or twice and clearly recognised his face. And Rossi was acting this way because he liked taking risks.

Stupid ones, in this case.

“Then you know what I’ve done to other people like you,” Alex continued, taking another step forward. The men took another step back, almost stumbling over their feet to get away from him. “You know that most people who have dealt with me and tried to double-cross me have ended up dead.” Another step, another stumble. Most of those people didn’t end up dead on purpose, but he wasn’t going to tell them that. Besides, he’d mentioned it on the phone earlier, and the man had seemed confident. Now? Not so much. “You know that most of those people are tougher than you are, have committed acts of terrorism and killed people more important to the world than my housekeeper.” Demoting Jack to housekeeper verbally wasn’t meant to be an insult, and he’d definitely try to make it up to her for saying that. But he was pointing out the obvious. No one had ever tried to blackmail him before and succeeded. Most people who tried to double-cross him and get him killed only tried to blackmail him using information that was important to governments and really big, important people. No one had ever tried to blackmail him using his housekeeper, who meant the world to him but meant nothing to the U.S. Government.

Another step, and this time the men didn’t stumble. This time, the men backed into a vent Alex had seen coming up behind them, and in their surprise the two of them turned to see what they had bumped into. Of course, this gave Alex the chance to make his move, and he turned briefly towards Ziva David.

Ziva David who had picked up her gun and was now throwing it in Alex’s direction, passing it to the teen so that he could at least threaten them with it, and at most shoot them for even _thinking_ of touching Jack. By the time the two men had turned back to face Alex, both the teen and the agent had their guns (Ziva had pulled her spare from her ankle holster) trained on them. Of course, the agent pointing her gun at them had the usual look of an important federal officer, but Alex? Alex looked intimidating, and he looked furious.

He didn’t need to say that he’d trained with some of the worst people in the world to know how to hold a gun. He didn’t need to say that he’d shot people before and that he wouldn’t hesitate to do it again if the situation called for it. It was all in his eyes.

“Let her go and you leave alive,” Alex commanded lowly, narrowing his eyes ever so slightly. He wasn’t playing this time. He was serious. He obviously didn’t want to let the terrorists just go free, but Jack meant the world to him. He wasn’t going to let a couple of guys take her away from him — not again. If anyone wanted to take Jack from him, even as a hostage, they were going to have to shoot him first.

There seemed to be a few moments where Rossi was trying to figure out whether he really wanted to follow Alex’s instructions or wanted to push him that little bit further. At least, that was what Alex thought was going through his mind. In the end, though, the gun’s aim shifted from Jack to Alex, and the redhead was pushed right into Alex’s line of fire so that he couldn’t do anything about it. Alex quickly dropped his gun and pulled Jack towards him, getting her out of the way.

Ziva, however, still had her gun pointed at the men.

“Our deal?”

Alex looked up when Rossi spoke. Then he dug his free hand into his pocket and pulled out a set of car keys, before tossing them over to the dealer. “Complete. You can go.”

The man caught the keys as they were tossed, and he watched Alex carefully for a few moments to see whether the teen would pull anything before beginning to head towards the door. (Alex was very tempted to, he really was, but he thought he’d give the agents a break and just let the man walk away.) Of course, he didn’t say a word to Alex, but that was fine with him. Their interaction was done — they’d got their free ticket out of the country, and Alex had Jack back. There was no reason to say anything.

In fact, no one said anything further until both men were gone.

“Are you really letting them go free?” Jack murmured, a frown on her face. As much as she hated Alex having to do his job, she knew that sometimes it was necessary. Especially when it came to criminals like drug dealers and terrorists.

The look Alex gave Jack was one of incredulity. “You really think they’re going scot-free?” He smirked. “Come on, Jack, have a little more faith in me.”

“You almost shot a man to save me and I didn’t scream bloody murder. I think I have more than enough faith in you, thanks.”

* * *

The rest of Alex’s holiday passed pretty uneventfully, fortunately. He wasn’t sure if he could take another case cropping up again, or another criminal asshole deciding to use him to get their way. Alex just wanted peace and sleep, which he got plenty of that night when he and Jack returned to her parents’ house.

Of course, there were many things that happened before they actually got to Jack’s parents’ house, one of which happened to be Alex and Jack heading back to NCIS for debriefing (and a much-needed chat with a trained psychologist, which Ducky was more than happy to help out with). When Alex was taken into the conference room to chat with Dr Mallard, Ziva pulled Jack into the corridor to speak with her privately. She needed her thoughts confirmed by someone who knew the teen and clearly knew about a certain part of his life.

The two women stood there for a few moments, Ziva debating how to say what she wanted to say, before she decided to just come out with it.

“Alex is a government agent, isn’t he?”

Jack stared at Ziva for a few moments, and she looked like she was about to deny it, when she eventually sighed. “Yeah. He, uh… he works for MI6.”

MI6. Of course. Ziva recalled hearing about him and how he’d worked to bring down terrorist agencies. How he was more successful than most adults in the same line of work. How he had links everywhere he went, and everywhere he worked. How almost every government worldwide wanted to work with him to ensure the safety of their citizens, to get the job done with minimal casualties. Alex Rider was a famed name in any government intelligence agency — even her father had spoken of him and how he would like to borrow him from the British some time.

The man wanting to get rid of him and using Jack to do that made a lot more sense now. Meeting Alex would only lead to his demise, and he knew it. He would have heard more than enough stories of Alex’s antics to be wary of him and everything he could do. It wasn’t as if knowledge of who Alex was was restricted to government agencies. But, obviously, trying to get to Alex through Jack had been the wrong thing to do. He was more intelligent than most people realised.

Jack’s eyes widened as the cogs turned in Ziva’s head. “They’re not going to find out about this, are they? We just about managed to get out of having security detail for this whole trip, and he’s meant to be on break from any missions until he gets back from this holiday. He’d wanted to stop until the end of his A-Levels, at least, but evil doesn’t wait that long, I guess.”

Ziva’s heart went out to the woman, and to Alex. She knew what it was like to have your childhood ripped from you by espionage and evil. A teenager certainly didn’t belong in this world either. “I am sorry your break was disturbed by us, but I will try my hardest to make sure MI6 does not find out about this.” Though, of course, there was a strong chance that they had already. The best she could do was to make sure the situation was controlled from their end.

The warm smile that appeared on the redhead’s face made Ziva worry a little less. “Thank you.”

“You are very welcome.” The ex-Mossad agent glanced towards the conference room door as it began to open, and Alex stepped out with Ducky not too far behind him. The elderly man gave Ziva a gentle smile and a nod, before glancing to Alex. “Now, young man, I trust you will take better care of yourself in the future?”

When Jack frowned at Alex, his only response was, “If I’d eaten better and not gone for cheap snacks, this wouldn’t have happened,” in a deadpan voice. In fact, the comment was so deadpan and sarcastic, that it made all three adults chuckle, and the teen cracked a grin.

* * *

Returning to the bullpen, Ziva sighed as she sat at her desk. Alex and Jack had been escorted out of the building, heading back to Jack’s parents’ place to finish off their holiday. All was well. Well, at least she _hoped_ all was well. It was more like it was all well on _Jack and Alex’s_ side.

On their side, though? The murderer had got away. Alex had got what he wanted, but in the process NCIS had been forced to give up their murderer and let him go scot-free. It wouldn’t make sense to any usual agent, and as it was Ziva was surprised that Gibbs had let Alex carry out his plan. Granted, she had been worried that he’d blow it and seriously injure Rossi at the very least. But it had happened, and it was too late now. There weren’t even any trackers on the vehicles that they had procured for the man, as per his request, and Alex had been pretty determined to make sure this request was followed. He’d gone through the vehicle and thoroughly checked every part of it. Which had confused them all.

Until Alex explained that small part of his plan to her.

“We just got a call from Metro,” McGee announced as he put his phone down, a small smirk on his face. “Answering the BOLO. _Apparently,_ some guys matching the descriptions we sent out just pulled up on the interstate with no gas in their tank and an engine on fire. They were answering the call with the fire department and when they recognised the descriptions, they arrested them and brought them in for us. They’re downstairs heading to the holding cells now.”

Ziva cracked a smirk.

“Wait,” Tony said, a frown on his face. “What about—”

“There’s no helicopter, Tony,” Ziva interjected. “Alex asked me to cancel the request as soon as McGee made it.”

Tony looked extremely puzzled for more than a few moments. Ziva understood why, admittedly, but she also knew it wasn’t too difficult of a concept to understand. There was no helicopter. Alex had planned for it. He hadn’t wanted the two men to escape any other way, which was why Gibbs and Tony had been asked to stay hidden on the roof the entire time and make sure the two men didn’t pull any funny business instead of, you know, catching them before they got to the car. Alex hadn’t wanted to leave himself open for revenge — he’d had too much of that in his young life.

Plus, it was a petty, teenaged way of getting his own revenge.

“How did he even set that up for the car?” Tony asked near-silently, his eyes wide in awe.

Ziva didn’t want to tell him that she knew exactly how and that she’d been watching him as he’d checked the car. She could also tell that McGee had an idea of how, but he wasn’t going to spill either. All Tony needed to know was that Alex had done it, and now they had a pair of criminals waiting to be questioned and charged by them.

And, honestly, as grateful as Ziva was for Alex’s help, she much preferred to keep him out of the picture so that he could get the restful holiday he deserved.

* * *

Getting back to the house, Jack’s parents were more than glad to see the pair of them back in time for dinner. Of course, Jack was starving, but Alex had already eaten. (He was already really hungry, but not to the point that his stomach would end up eating him from the inside out.) So the pair of them had quickly showered and changed into comfortable clothes before heading down to dinner.

It was just as Alex had finished changing that there was a knock on the door, and he called out a quick, “Come in!” before going back to sorting out his hair. It was still a little damp from only being towel-dried, but it was tolerable and could be sorted out to stay out of his face. It would dry by the time he went to bed if the warm weather kept up like this.

Turning around, he was a little surprised to see Jack stood in the open doorway instead of one of his ‘cousins’ coming to get him for dinner. Giving his hair one last ruffle, he tossed the towel onto his bed. “Jack, you alright?”

Jack was stood in front of him, hugging herself. She looked like she wanted to say something, but she also looked like she wanted to cry. Alex, of course, understood why — she had been in a dangerous situation before, obviously, but this had hit a little too close to home. And it wasn’t as if she’d been held at gunpoint like that before. When he didn’t get an immediate reply, he moved towards her and pulled her into a tight hug, not surprised at all when she hugged him back and nuzzled her face into the crook of his neck. The pair stood there like that for a few moments, just relishing in the affectionate contact, before Alex finally pulled away. There were a few tears in Jack’s eyes, but she wiped them away quickly, as if she hadn’t wanted Alex to see them.

“I’ll be fine,” she answered quietly, taking a deep breath. “It’s just—”

“A lot?” Alex finished for her, knowing exactly what she meant. She nodded.

“A lot.”

“You think food will help you feel better?”

Jack’s eyes narrowed at him. “Is that your way of saying we should go down for dinner before anyone gets suspicious?”

Alex just gave her a cheeky grin, which made her laugh and shake her head as he looped his arm around hers and dragged her out of the room. Hey, he was hungry, and he wasn’t going to let Jack mope now when she could do that with ice cream _after_ dinner. And, you know, they had the rest of the holiday to emotionally talk and make up for the stressful time they’d had today.

Now, though? Now was time for food and cheering up around family. And if anyone asked why they took so long at the mall, he would just point out Jack’s indecisiveness… even if she wouldn’t be all too appreciative of that.


End file.
